thechaosengine.com ???

The forums were down a couple days ago, and I haven't checked back since.

Probably just a hosting snafu.

Yup it's been down for me for the last couple of days.

Down for me too. TCE and Prof Sminky had both been commenting recently about their host being basically crap, so I'm guessing they got fed up of it and are seeking another host. Hopefully back up in a few days, that's my guess.

I've never heard of it until today. Is it a site based on the game?

It's a games industry only forum. It kind of took over from Fatbabies when that died but to prevent all the problems that Fatbabies had you have to prove you're in the industry to get membership, so no 14 year old fanbois and much reduced risk of getting into trouble because something sensitive gets out to the Interweb at large. In theory there no management types are allowed to join so you can safely talk about your company without getting into trouble. That's not guaranteed though, as some recent threads have proved.