This is a submission to The Very Serious Juniper Dev Game Jam

CHAINBOUND

the chain remembers

A 2D dark-fantasy Metroidvania about a forgotten prisoner, a rusted chain, and the truth buried under five ruined worlds. Swing on chains, climb walls, dash through the ash, and unleash the Spin Burst on anything that moves.

The Premise

You wake in a tomb that was never meant to open. The chain around your wrist is older than the stone — and it remembers what you've forgotten. Something sealed the old machine below the ruins. Something is waking up.

Five worlds collapse into each other above the abyss: the moss-choked Verdant Graves, the humming Crystal Hollow, the ashen Ashen Bastion, and the floating Celestial Reach where the Forgotten Sentinel keeps its endless watch. Each one holds a fragment of who you were — and a piece of what you have to break to get out.

There is no tutorial. There is only the chain.

What's Inside

Five hand-built levels with their own hazards, enemies, anchors, and relics. Progress is gated by relic fragments — find enough to open the portal to the next world, or stay and hunt every lore stone for the full story.

Wall climbing with a stamina meter. Press W against a wall to climb. Press S to slide down fast. Reach the top and you mantle over automatically. Fall past a ledge and you auto-grab it. Run out of stamina and you slide, exhausted, with red sparks warning you to find floor.

Pin-joint grapple physics. Aim at any anchor, fire the chain, and swing. Build momentum, pump with W/S, release at the apex to fly. Fast releases grant a speed boost. The chain is your movement, your weapon, and your way out.

Spin to win. Every action — hits, jumps, dashes, grapples, kills — builds the Spin meter. At CHARGED you trail crystal sparks. At OVERDRIVE you glow gold, regen health slowly, and your shots pierce. Press U to unleash a Spin Burst: a radial shockwave that consumes all stored spin for massive AoE damage and knockback. Bigger spin, bigger blast.

Four ability unlocks. Collect relics to earn:

  • Long Chain (3 relics) — grapple range extended
  • Triple Jump (6 relics) — one more air jump
  • Swift Dash (8 relics) — dash speed boosted
  • Vital Surge (12 relics) — max health raised

A boss with three phases. The Forgotten Sentinel guards the final truth. Learn its tells, dodge its patterns, and break it open.

Combat juice. Squash and stretch on every impact. Hitstop on heavy hits. Screen shake scaled to damage. Damage numbers, combo counter, and style ranks (C / B / A / S) that climb as you string kills. Speed boost on fast grapple releases. Particles everywhere — gold on hits, crystal on dashes, pale dust on landings.

124 hand-drawn pixel-art sprites. Every player frame, every enemy, the boss, every VFX, every tile and background prop — embedded directly in the HTML. No external files. No loading screens. Just the game.

Controls

Action Key
Move A / D
Jump (double / triple when unlocked) Space
Dash Shift
Climb wall (uses stamina) W
Slide down wall fast S
Mantle / ledge-grab automatic
Grapple to anchor E or Left Mouse
Shoot chain bolt J
Whip attack K
Charge shot (hold, release) L
SPIN BURST U
Ground slam S + Space in air
Pause Esc / P
Restart R


Keyboard + mouse recommended. Plays in any modern browser.

Tips from the Chain

  • Build spin before tough fights. Whip a few enemies, dash around, then Burst the group. An OVERDRIVE Burst on a cluster is the fastest way to clear a room.
  • Wall-climb stamina is precious. Don't waste it on walls you can simply jump up. Save it for the tall ones — and mantle the moment you reach the top, before you slide.
  • Grapple releases give speed. Release at the bottom of a fast swing for a speed boost that carries into your next jump.
  • Lore stones tell the story. They're optional, but each one fills in who you were. Look for them in corners and on high ledges.
  • The Sentinel's third phase is a spin check. Stock up before the fight.

Tech

Pure HTML5 Canvas + vanilla JavaScript. No dependencies, no build step, no server. All sprites are embedded as base64 data URIs — the entire game is one ~150 KB index.html file. Runs at 60 FPS.

Made with the chain. The chain remembers.

Best played in the dark.

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