Games I Played in 2024 - Chenso Club

Console: Switch, XSX, XB1, PS4, PS5, PC

Developer: Pixadome

Release Date: September 1st 2022

Chenso Club is a roguelite platform brawler with cute pixel art, charming characters, and a focus on difficulty. The second release by the now-dormant Pixadome, Chenso Club makes a good first impression, but struggles to keep the momentum going and ends up stifled by its own design choices.

Chenso Club's key mechanic is its difficulty counter: whenever a world is completed, the difficulty counter goes up by 1 and all enemies grow stronger and tougher. Upon death, as is typical of a roguelite, all powerups and upgrades are lost, and the difficulty counter returns to 1. The game also boasts four difficulty settings to allow the player the customize their experience, but it's quite clear that the target audience is firmly players who enjoy a difficult game, as the game can give you trouble even on Casual.

Counting its final world, Chenso Club has six unique worlds: the Castle, the Bio Lab, the Clock Tower, the Icy Mountain, the Burning City, and the Void. Each world does feels unique and has a different cast of enemies, reskinned hazards, and a unique boss. Each world consists of six groups of randomly generated rooms populated with enemies, and progression is identical to a beat 'em up: defeat all enemies to progress. The enemy variety is deceptively shallow: a lot of them are flying enemies that charge at the player after a delay, explode when they die, or stationary turrets. While the visuals change, the behaviors don't particularly change. The bosses are also a bit lacking in memorability and feel like a bit of an afterthought. Most damningly, without spoiling anything, Chenso Club's idea of a difficult final boss is just filling the screens with projectiles and calling it a day. Very disappointing.

Though it is a platform brawler, Chenso Club leans far more towards the brawler side: there is a lack of platforming challenges and it's all about combat. The invincible 4-way dash is used more for moving between enemies and dodging than for actual platforming, and the sides of the screen have a blast zone à la Super Smash Bros.: going off screen results in an explosion and respawning with a bit less health. The room layouts do feel like they are a tad lacking in variety, though: over a couple of hours I ran into many repeats already.

Combat is simple enough, but feels quite satisfying. There are two attack buttons which, when pressed at the same time as up or down, give access to different moves depending on if the character is in the air or not. Hitting an enemy after a dash refreshes the dash, giving the player some fun movement options, especially since all the characters have attacks that double as movement options.

One of the game's strongest points is the playable cast: all five characters feel genuinely unique and have their own strategies, and also have appealing designs. The main character, Blue, is a jack-of-all-trades with short range, good movement tools, and a chainsaw revving mechanic that powers up her next attack. Carmine is the slow and powerful character, with long-reaching melee attacks and big projectiles. Plum is the mage of the cast and has unique mechanics tied to spellcasting, as well as a very slow, floaty dash that makes her feel truly unique. Alice is the cast's speedster and most of her heavy attacks are simply a grappling hook, making her especially well-suited for speedy players. And Molly is the ranged character, being a firefighter with a water hose that needs to recharge her ammo regularly. If there's any reason to play the game and keep playing, it's the characters.

While moving around and fighting feels good (a lot of negative reviews point out sluggish controls, which I don't personally understand), the same can't really be said about the game's overall roguelite design. While I understand the desire to make a hard game, especially when it's short, this is a misguided attempt to upping the difficulty of the game. The difficulty counter feels like an artificial way to keep the difficulty balance up as you acquire power-ups, rather than making each successive level harder than the last naturally. This seems to stem from the decision of being able to choose any unlocked world as your starting world, and I think it's a bit of a mistake.

Once unlocked, the Void (and thus, the final boss) can only be accessed through the shop that randomly appears after clearing a room sometimes, and its difficulty is set in stone. As a result, unless very good at the game, a "complete" run involves powering yourself up in the five other worlds until you feel confident enough to tackle the Void. This is different from many other modern roguelites, in which a "complete" run involves going through all worlds sequentially to fight the final boss at the end.

Ultimately, this works against Chenso Club, as it frames each of the five base worlds as 'busywork' until you're strong enough to tackle the Void. There's really no progression to speak of: enemies don't particularly get harder or more complex as you go on, they just look different and maybe have slightly different attacks. It serves more to highlight the lack of variety in the game. In a way, it accidentally makes the rest of the game feel like you have to grind just to try the Void, rather than make the process of powering up enjoyable.

The roguelite elements are also quite barebones: while there are power-ups and items you can acquire throughout a playthrough, the only permanent feature is the followers. The game features an in-game social media platform called Chirp where fans (essentially account EXP) grant currency to add more items to the item pool, once NPCs decide to add you (which occurs after clearing one of their quests when they randomly show up).

The NPC quests are nothing special: three of them are seers, which modify the game for a handful of rooms; the janitor is a minigame, and the clock is a time attack modifier. The three seers can either make the difficulty higher for a few rooms, make both you and the enemies deal more damage for a few rooms, or make the game dark for a few rooms. All the NPC quests net you an item or two upon completion. There is also a bonus level that randomly appears at the end of a cleared room, typically the last one of a section, that, if done perfectly (which isn't very difficult) nets you three items.

This highlights another issue of Chenso Club: the items. Most (if not all?) roguelites have interesting power-ups and items that change gameplay and have synergies that can be exploited. Chenso Club, on the other hand, merely has passive upgrades, and some lackluster active items, of which only one can be held at a time. The active items all feel weak, or awkward to use. The value of power-ups is also inconsistent: the shop uses health as currency, so buying anything is a risk. So why buy anything if you can get more items for no cost by just playing? The idea of using your health as currency for risk-reward is an interesting one, but the items are so uninteresting that they just feel like a "win more" endeavor for when you've got a lot of health; the risk is just too great otherwise.

The game's story and tone is also confusing: it starts with a goofy, fun tone and showcases its likable cast very well, but its silly alien invasion plot turns into something very serious and melancholic at the last minute without really transitioning into it properly. It doesn't land like a parody or joke, either, it just becomes a sad, dark story out of nowhere and it feels very out of place. This is sharply contrasted by the colorful and silly tone of the rest of the game, where you get followers on social media, participate in what is ostensibly a game show, and do a red carpet photoshoot with superfans hounding you after every boss.

It's also worth mentioning that Chenso Club has quite a few typos and grammar mistakes, to the point of a loading screen tip misspelling "Chirp" as "Chrip". I also ran into a handful of non-game breaking bugs, such as an enemy disappearing (it was killed off as a failsafe after around 30 seconds) or my character being unable to move until I jumped again after a wild scramble. Together with the lack of difficulty balance and the weakness of power-ups and items, it just feels like the game wasn't iterated on enough.

Chenso Club's soundtrack was made by Knasibas, and is perfect for the game. It's bouncy, exciting, catchy, and fits the game's overall vibes. Even the odd tonal change is properly scored. Each world gets two themes, and the themes all fit them wonderfully with little unique touches: the Clock Tower has prominent theremin as a haunted level, the Icy Mountain has echoey light piano melodies and sparkly synths, etc. Even if the game is small and there's a limited amount of content, all of the music hits the mark.

PROS AND CONS

PROS

    • Unique, distinct cast of playable characters that all truly play differently from each other.

    • Banger soundtrack.

    • Great pixel art visuals that show a lot of personality and energy, with some good sub-pixel animation as well.

    • Fun basic gameplay systems with satisfying combat for the most part.

CONS

    • Undervalued roguelite elements that make the game less interesting than it should be.

    • Odd difficulty system that serves only to mess up the feeling of progression.

    • Inconsequential or uninteresting items and power-ups.

    • Health being currency feels unnecessary considering the ease of acquiring power-ups in other ways.

    • Clashing tone in the narrative.

    • Poor mechanical variety for enemies.

    • Forgettable bosses.

    • Handful of typos and some bugs give the game an unpolished feel with everything else taken into consideration

WORTH PLAYING?

While my overall opinion of Chenso Club leans more on the negative than positive, I think it's hard for me to say such an inexpensive game made by a small team isn't worth playing at all. There are things to like here, and the game will resonate with some players far more than others. But for most people, if still interested, I'd go as far as say to wait for a sale in spite of its fun characters and great music. There's just too much that feels off to warrant a complete recommendation. Chenso Club is full of odd design decisions that weigh down the whole package. 

I don't like making these sort of reflections because I always try to take a piece of media for what it is and not for what it isn't or what I think it "should" be, it feels like Chenso Club should just be a regular platform brawler with a beginning, middle and end rather than trying to be a roguelite with a difficulty counter and freedom of starting areas. It feels shoehorned into a perfectly fine game because roguelites have exploded in recent years.

I don't quite know why Pixadome has gone dormant in the middle of developing their third game, as there are multiple possible reasons, but I do wish them well. Even if Chenso Club is a swing and a miss for me, there are still things to like about it, and I'm still curious to try out their first game, Hayfever.