There are games that want you to admire their world, games that want you to follow their story, and games that simply want to see how quickly you can get from A to B without making a complete mess of yourself. ChainStaff Time Trials very much belongs in that final category. It takes the movement mechanics of ChainStaff, strips away almost everything that isn’t necessary, and throws 50 tiny challenges at you, each one asking the same deceptively simple question: how fast can you do it?
Developed and published by Mommy’s Best Games, this DLC is unapologetically designed for players who enjoy mastering movement rather than merely completing levels. Each challenge can be finished in less than 30 seconds, while some can apparently be conquered in less than a second once you understand exactly what the designers expect from you. That sounds ridiculous at first, but after a few failed attempts you start to realise that the real game isn’t simply reaching the end. It is learning how to shave another fraction of a second from your route.
That makes ChainStaff Time Trials a very different beast from a conventional expansion. There is no substantial new narrative to follow and no sprawling adventure waiting beyond the next door. Instead, this is concentrated platforming designed around repetition, precision, and that slightly dangerous thought that you can definitely beat your previous time if you just have one more go.
Welcome to the Race
The concept is wonderfully straightforward. You are given 50 short challenge levels, each built around a particular movement idea or obstacle combination, and your job is to complete them as quickly as possible. The levels are deliberately compact, leaving very little time between starting a run and discovering whether you’ve got the necessary rhythm.
That brevity is important because failure doesn’t feel like a major setback. If you miss a swing, land in lava, or get flattened by a smasher, you’re not facing a lengthy replay before you can try again. You simply start again and try to correct the mistake. It creates that familiar speedrunning mentality where every failed attempt contains useful information.
The ChainStaff Takes Centre Stage
The entire DLC is essentially an extended examination of the ChainStaff itself. Whatever you thought you knew about swinging, launching and moving through the world in the main game is put under considerably more pressure here. The levels encourage you to use the weapon’s movement abilities quickly and confidently, often chaining several actions together with little room for hesitation.
There is a satisfying physicality to getting it right. You swing, release, redirect your movement and immediately prepare for the next obstacle. A good run starts to feel less like conventional platforming and more like choreography, with the best players turning what initially looks like a chaotic collection of hazards into a smooth sequence of perfectly timed movements.
Fifty Tiny Nightmares
Fifty levels might not sound like a huge amount of content, especially when each stage is designed to be completed in seconds. The clever part is that these aren’t simply 50 variations on the same course. Each challenge has its own little idea, asking you to approach the ChainStaff and the surrounding environment in a slightly different way.
One stage might be about getting the perfect swing, while another demands careful pogo jumps through an electric field. Elsewhere, you might need to navigate moving platforms or get past a turret without losing momentum. The individual stages are tiny, but together they create a surprisingly broad examination of your movement skills.
The Floor Is Very Much Lava
The environmental hazards are where the Time Trials can become particularly nasty. Lava pools pose an obvious threat, but they are only the beginning. Jumping spikes, electric fields, automated turrets, moving platforms and crushing smashers all want to interrupt your carefully planned route.
The best hazards aren’t necessarily the ones that kill you outright. Sometimes it is the obstacle that costs you half a second, forcing you to rethink the entire sequence because a slightly slower approach elsewhere could actually produce a faster overall time. That is where the DLC starts to reveal its real depth. You’re no longer simply asking how to survive a level. You’re asking how to survive it efficiently.
Bronze Is Only the Beginning
Every challenge provides Bronze, Silver and Gold medal times, giving you an immediate reason to revisit stages you’ve already completed. Reaching the end is only the first step. If you finish with a Bronze medal, you’ll probably be satisfied for about ten seconds before wondering what you need to change to reach Silver.
Gold is where the obsession begins. The difference between an ordinary run and a Gold medal can sometimes come down to a single missed swing or a slightly imperfect landing. Once you know a faster time is possible, the temptation to keep experimenting becomes surprisingly powerful.
This medal system works because it provides achievable goals at different levels. Bronze lets you feel like you’re making progress, Silver demands more consistency, and Gold asks you to start thinking like a speedrunner. It gives the 50 levels a sense of longevity without artificial padding.
Practice Makes Perfect
Perhaps the most important decision Mommy’s Best Games has made is to keep the levels hand-crafted rather than randomly generated. Every stage remains the same, so your failures are meaningful. You can learn the layout, develop muscle memory, and gradually refine your route.
There is something deeply satisfying about this design. The first attempt might feel impossible because you don’t yet understand what the level expects of you. After several attempts, you begin to see the intended sequence. Eventually, you stop thinking about individual movements and simply perform them.
That transition from confusion to instinct is one of the great pleasures of precision platforming. ChainStaff Time Trials understands that process and builds its entire experience around it.
One Second? Seriously?
The promise of sub-second completion times sounds like marketing nonsense until you understand how these levels are designed. With stages this short, even tiny differences in movement can have enormous consequences. A route that takes a second can suddenly become considerably faster once you discover the correct interaction or shortcut.
For the average player, these times are less a realistic target than an invitation to wonder how on earth anyone could achieve them. For dedicated players, however, they become a challenge in their own right. There is always someone faster, and the leaderboard makes sure you know it.
Racing the World
Global leaderboards give the DLC its competitive edge. Once you’ve achieved a time you’re happy with, you can upload it and see how you compare with players elsewhere. Suddenly, completing a level isn’t necessarily the end of the experience.
Leaderboards can be wonderfully motivating, though they can also be humbling. You might spend ages perfecting a run only to discover you’re nowhere near the top. Rather than making the achievement meaningless, that can provide another reason to keep playing. There is always another tiny improvement to chase.
For players who have no interest in competing against others, the leaderboards are easy enough to ignore. The medal system provides plenty of personal goals without requiring you to care about somebody else’s time. But for those who enjoy competition, they add exactly the extra incentive this sort of DLC needs.
Heavy Metal in the Background
Visually, ChainStaff Time Trials retains the distinctive personality of the main game. The hand-drawn, heavy-metal-inspired aesthetic gives the levels plenty of character, even though the environments are compact and functional. It is an unusual look that helps prevent the DLC from feeling like a sterile collection of platforming exercises.
The fast movement also benefits from the visual effects and camera work. When you’re swinging at ridiculous speeds, clarity becomes important, and the presentation generally does a good job of keeping the action readable. You need to know where you’re going because hesitation is usually the difference between a gold medal and another restart.
The energetic rock soundtrack is a particularly good match for the experience. Constant retries could become monotonous with the wrong music, but the high-energy score helps maintain the feeling that you’re always one attempt away from doing something spectacular.
The Price of Speed
There is one unavoidable issue with a DLC like this: its appeal is highly specific. If you enjoy story-driven expansions, new environments, or substantial additions to a game’s world, 50 extremely short levels may not sound especially exciting. Even completing every challenge once could be a relatively brief experience.
But that criticism misses the intended audience. This isn’t really about how long it takes to reach the end of all 50 levels. It is about how long you are willing to spend perfecting them. A player who wants to earn Gold on every stage and climb the leaderboards could spend considerably longer here than someone who simply races through each course once.
It is the same principle that makes a good arcade game so difficult to put down. The content is small, but mastery is enormous.
Designed for Perfectionists
ChainStaff Time Trials is at its best when you stop treating it like a standard platforming expansion. Don’t rush through all 50 stages. Instead, pick a level, learn its rhythm, and see how quickly you can make it work.
There is a strange satisfaction in watching your time gradually fall. Thirty seconds becomes 25, then 20. Suddenly you’re celebrating a tiny improvement that, to anyone watching, would probably seem completely insignificant. But you know how much effort went into getting there, and that’s what makes it worthwhile.
Final Verdict
ChainStaff Time Trials is a focused DLC package that does exactly what it sets out to do. Its 50 hand-crafted challenges provide a concentrated test of the ChainStaff’s movement mechanics, while hazards, medal times and global leaderboards give players plenty of reasons to return. The levels are short, but the potential for mastery is anything but.
It isn’t going to appeal to everyone. Players looking for more story or a substantial new adventure should probably look elsewhere, as this is pure mechanical challenge from beginning to end. For platforming fans, speedrunners and anyone who enjoys chasing the perfect time, however, it is a delicious little test of skill.
Mommy’s Best Games has taken the movement system and stripped it down to its most satisfying ingredients. Swing faster, jump cleaner, learn the route and try again. When you finally shave those precious milliseconds from your best time, you’ll understand exactly what makes ChainStaff Time Trials tick.
