The Chameleon

Developed By: Merlino Games

Published By: Merlino Games

Price: £6.99 / $9.99

Stealth, Action

Stealth games are always fun. It’s nice to just sit around and plan out your route, or find different ways to sneak around. It allows for different avenues with the variety of tools at your disposal, ala Dishonored or Thief. One of the more interesting tools for a game with stealth as its focus is the ability to change into anyone to bypass enemies. The Chameleon is a game that takes this and makes it the focus. 

What Am I?

The story is rather simple. You wake up in a part of an evacuated experimental facility with no knowledge of who you are or why you are here. The entirety of the facility’s security force is out looking for you, and you don’t know why. All you know is that you have strange abilities, and must use them to explore the facility to find out what happened. 

The story overall is alright. Barely there, but The Chameleon itself is short. I would say it took me less than two hours to finish up, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to have a story. Instead, you mostly pick up bits of background lore or story through postings on the wall, audio recordings, and emails on computers. Safe to say there is a lot that isn’t right about this place, and it was fun to find out more about it. Though the pacing was a bit shoddy, in my opinion. 

When you start The Chameleon, you’ll be hit with this sense of style and presentation. Obviously it’s going for a very 70’s aesthetic. Evident not only from the protagonist’s manner of dress, but the music you hear as you play the game too. The music is great, funky tunes that somehow fit this strange, scientific setting.

Also, the graphics style really does compliment this as well as the themes of The Chameleon. The protagonist being so low-fidelity actually works with the abilities you’ll gain as a Chameleon-like creature. It looks low-fidelity, but you feel like it looks even more different than that. I appreciate little things like this.

Solid Chameleon

So, you start off The Chameleon with the basic essentials that make up any stealth game: you can crouch, whistle, and super punch. When you are near corners, you can look around them, but I still wish I could just change the camera angle because it’s always on the right side. Sometimes it’d be more comfortable for it to be on the left. Anyway, you spend these first few minutes getting used to sneaking around, looking around corners, and luring enemies to bypass them. 

These enemies are formidable, but not very intelligent. They can hear when an enemy is killed if they are close, but when they find one of their own dead, they don’t sound an alarm. Though, I should be thankful for that. If there was an alarm stage like Metal Gear Solid, that would be annoying and tedious. Also you can straight up out run them if you just keep running. 

However, when they spot you, there’s naught you can do to shake them off. They’ll chase you down to the ends of the earth and tase you to death. Also, there are some you just can’t touch because their wiring is exposed, causing you to get electrocuted if you touch them. When you die, you just restart from the nearest checkpoint. Being around them can get a bit daunting. But then you get your first abilities. 

Your Tools

You’ll know you’re about to get an ability when you hear what good mac ‘n cheese sounds like. From time to time you’ll come across these fleshy orbs that when you touch them will gift you with a certain ability. The first one you attain is the Chameleon ability, allowing you to shapeshift into the game’s main enemy, the guards. However, abilities like this will use energy. 

Energy is like your stamina meter. You need it to use your abilities and you need it to be able to take down your enemies with a super punch. Usually, one hit with your fist will take it down to zero, while using Chameleon will gradually use it up. I am fine with this, it offers a good balance to keep up, plus it’s not too debilitating. There are only two ways to regain energy: you either wait for the meter to refill, or you grab an energy pack, which you can find through exploration. 

Exploration Is Key

Exploration makes up a majority of The Chameleon. You’ll be exploring this facility to not only garner more background lore and energy packs, but to even find more flesh balls for abilities. Sometimes you’ll need abilities to reach other areas of the facility in order to progress. In addition, you can break cracked walls with your fists for more secrets. 

This plays into your base objectives as well. When you look at the many maps posted throughout the facility, it will point out what your objective is. Usually, this is finding a terminal that opens a specific door. It’s kinda bland in the way that game objectives go, but it works because it just forces you to engage with the game, sneaking past enemies to get to the terminal. It also requires you to memorize the map, as some of these areas of the facility are maze-like in structure.

However, The Chameleon kinda drops this near the end. It opens up and has an obvious progression, but I just didn’t realize it. Then, I accidentally sequence broke the game, and got the most powerful ability before getting the ones that should allow me to get that one, all because I could outrun the guards and the turrets. It made the last bit extremely hilarious though, as I realized I should’ve done it all in a specific order. 

That ending area though, and it’s pacing, struck me as somewhat strange though. The areas aren’t too big, so you can grab those abilities and what you need to progress and just move on rather quickly. Everything just seemed to have sped up as soon as you entered that last area. 

Slipping Up

Other than pacing issues, I did run into some problems with the game itself. It’s save system… half of it didn’t work for me. I’ll explain. So I saved the game, and was sneaking underneath the warehouse staircase when I got stuck. I didn’t think too much of it because I saved and could easily restore it. When I had quit to the main menu and loaded back in, instead of being where I was, I was put at the beginning of the game. However, all the doors I had unlocked were still unlocked. 

Safe to say, I found this glitch in particular to be pretty strange, plus the one where I got stuck and couldn’t move. Thankfully, I didn’t run into too many other problems; the game is fairly polished, but it does have some rough edges that need to be ironed out. 

Unknown Entity

The Chameleon is really short though, but it does so with a pretty decent price for such an experience. I didn’t find it an enthralling time, but it was interesting enough that I got through it and thought of it with mostly positive thoughts. Also, I see the potential for some crazy tech with speedrunners. 

Overall, The Chameleon is an intriguing two-hour stealth game about finding out about this strange world you’re in. It’s stealth mechanics are rather basic, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome in the amount of time you have with it. Plus the exploration rewarding you with extra bits of story and lore do help stretch that runtime out a bit. For the price you’re getting the game for, I’d say it’s well worth admission. 

 

Verdict

Recommended

 

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Reviewed by Freelance7. Game provided by Merlino Games.