A brutal new gladiator-themed roguelike from the indie developers at Featherweight Games was announced over this summer, alongside a now-passed free-to-play demo—which took place at the end of August—and a planned release window for the first quarter of 2026. Chained Beasts sees up to four players challenge a treacherous colosseum where a slew of fierce combatants await their turn to fight. Anyone would imagine that the environment of an active colosseum would be dingy and harsh on both the eyes and nose. The art style chosen for this game reflects this description perfectly, thanks to the use of gritty, black ink line work that gets into the deep details, paired with vibrant cel-shading to enhance the colors of each character as well as the blood staining the colosseum floor.
As the game is set in a colosseum, the rules cannot be too far in favor of the player; hence, giving the player the ability to fight without any form of hindrance would lead to poor reception from the colosseum’s fabricated audience. For this reason, as the game’s name suggests, you take on the position of one of this colosseum’s many Chained Beasts. Being chained to your allies is not always the worst thing, however, as it brings forth a level of nuance to the base combat system that was not present before. The use of the chain that restrains you and your partner can also act as a weapon, for example, a tripwire to knock foes to the ground, catching them off guard with ease. Through careful coordination with your partners, this chain can go from a hindrance to a strong weapon, which, from a game design perspective encourages thoughtful communication between players and emphasizes teamwork. In a genre where coop play often leads to more of a competition as to who can get the best item inventory or survive the longest out of the group, Chained Beasts has effectively built teamwork into the fundamentals of their combat system.
This creative use of game design choices is palpable throughout the trailers for Chained Beasts as well, as we are presented with the item system that the game plans to offer. This details a feature where certain side effects will provide hindrances for the player in the form of physical and mental injuries, for example, as a result of drinking the putrid healing elixir. In the trailer, we see this in the form of an ailment referred to as bloody eye, which causes blindness in your character’s left eye to block half of the screen at all times. Design choices like these are what keep a game feeling fresh every time you come back to it, and with Chained Beasts being a four-player coop gladiator experience, the amount of replayability the developers seem to be planning for this title would excite any roguelike or beat-em-up fan.
Though there is no officially set date, Chained Beasts will be releasing for PC via Steam in early 2026.