Most retro-inspired games tip their hat to the same short list of untouchable classics. Zelda. Castlevania. Metroid. Chrono Trigger. You can practically predict the aesthetic from the first screenshot. ChainStaff, the new release from indie developer Mommy's Best Games, does something genuinely different: it reaches back into the forgotten corners of gaming history and pulls out something that feels completely new.
The Commodore Amiga called, and it wants you to see this
Here's the thing about ChainStaff's visual identity: it doesn't look like a love letter to Nintendo. It looks like a brand new game for the Commodore Amiga. The hyper-saturated colours, surreal architecture, and relentless parade of oversized laser-firing insects and crustaceans all evoke the psychedelic box art of Psygnosis titles from the late '80s and early '90s, games famous for their bizarre alien landscapes and sought-after cover art. Skybound jellyfish tendrils function as platforms. Giant red butterflies exist purely for visual atmosphere. A screen-high fish is just another obstacle.
The enemy design alone reads like a fever dream from a forgotten arcade cabinet. Alien pigs with neon-coloured assault hairstyles. Flying eagle-snake hybrids. A giant skull you blast apart from the inside. Enormous butterfly-gun-dragons. Square flying owl heads big enough to stand on, forming entire platform-hopping sequences. Every stage introduces something more eccentric than the last, like flipping through prog rock album covers from a parallel dimension where game design never got conservative.
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ChainStaff is available now on Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch, published by Mommy's Best Games.
What makes the chainstaff itself worth talking about
The visual chaos would mean less if the core mechanics didn't back it up. ChainStaff's level design draws from the freeform, open, and vertical layouts of ancient computer run-and-guns like Turrican, giving players real space to move. That space exists for a reason: the titular weapon demands it.
The chainstaff functions as a grappling hook, a platform, a shield, and a spear simultaneously. That kind of multi-role versatility isn't just a design flourish; the levels are built around forcing players to use all of it. The open vertical architecture and the weapon's flexibility feed directly into each other, which is the key here when separating genuine retro craftsmanship from surface-level nostalgia bait.
Why Mommy's Best Games keeps getting this right
ChainStaff doesn't exist in isolation. Mommy's Best Games has built a catalog that reads like a ROM roulette wheel spinning across decades and continents. Bumpy Grumpy channels early '80s arcade simplicity, with stark black outlines and flat colours that honestly look like they'd advertise "SCROLLING!" as a marquee feature. Its lane-changing mechanic isn't just aesthetic homage either; those harsh movement restrictions create a focused, score-chasing experience that feels genuinely modern.
Shoot 1UP DX goes further, with multi-directional shooting and scrolling that echoes Konami's hybrid shmups Salamander and Stinger, but presents the directional shift as a smooth choice between branching paths rather than a jarring mechanical switch. That's a meaningful design distinction, not a cosmetic one.
What most players miss is that these games aren't nostalgic in the way most retro-inspired releases are. They're not reconstructing the look of beloved classics. They're excavating the ideas buried in games that most people never played, then rebuilding those ideas with modern design sensibility on top.
Retro has more territory left than the genre suggests
The indie scene's relationship with retro aesthetics has become almost self-defeating. When every pixel-art platformer is chasing the same Metroid-meets-Castlevania formula, the aesthetic stops feeling like a creative choice and starts feeling like a default setting. ChainStaff is a useful reminder that gaming's past is enormous, and most of it hasn't been mined yet.
There are Czech action games, untranslated Japanese summer holiday adventures, and Amiga-era psychedelic shooters that never got their due. Developers willing to look past the canonical shortlist will find reference points that make their work feel genuinely surprising rather than comfortably familiar.
ChainStaff is out now across all major platforms. If you want more on what the indie scene is producing right now, make sure to check out more:
