Chronicon is an example of pure dedication, as Subworld developed this excellent 2D action RPG over the course of over five years and it's now left Early Access.
A game that won me over from the first time I loaded it up too, with the heavy atmosphere and intense action that really does give you a classic Diablo feel wrapped up in some nice pixel art with great lighting and effects. It has a curious story too, as you're in a world that appears to have been save already. You're granted the honour of using the Chronicon, a device that allows you to open portals to re-live old tales.
To give you an idea, see the launch trailer below:
Direct Link
New as of the big 1.0 release:
- Added Act 5, complete with 29 new areas, 23 quests (8 optional), 12 new unique items from 12 unique monster spawns, 7 new enemy types with a total of 27 variations, 6 new troves to find, and 5 new big bosses to fight!
- Added 24 new Legendary+ items.
- Added 24 new endgame Runes.
- Updated 26 items with new powers, improved powers, or power tweaks.
- Updated & improved 14 sets.
- Updated & improved 9 Runes.
- Added new Anomaly bosses, layouts, and rare modifiers.
- Added 20 new Achievements.
- Added many suggestions and QoL improvements.
- Added over 120 new sound effects to monsters, bosses, interface, etc.
- Improved performance.
The amount that's available to play through in Chronicon is quite ridiculous and impressive, with it starting off slow and steady it gradually expands into some insane fights against enemies big and small. And the loot, my word, the loot! You're going to be utterly spoilt by all the spoils. Even more impressive when you realise this was the first game made by a solo developer, Daniel “Squarebit” Stigsjöö is the only person that makes up the independent studio Subworld from Sweden. Something that was originally meant to only be a small rogue-lite that just continued expanding.
We helped the developer sort out their Linux dependencies in a previous release (volunteered help), so it should continue working nicely across various Linux distributions. The only issue I encountered was the Steam Overlay not appearing.
You can find Chronicon on Humble Store and Steam.
Played it about 15 hours last year in Early Access, playing it again now, all seems fine.
Attempting to set gamepadcount to 0
Steam_Shutdown1
Steam_Shutdown2
Steam_Shutdown3
Steam_Shutdown4
Steam_Shutdown5
Steam_Shutdown6
Steam_Shutdown7
Steam_Shutdown8
Steam_Shutdown9
Segmentation fault
?
Quoting: JuliusWorks fine here on Manjaro as well. Graphics take some time to get used to, but the game is a solid loot driven ARPG. The main problem is that it is way too easy. Even on legendary mode you can just walk through it at least with my character build. Maybe I got a strange unbalanced skill combination by accident?
I have a feeling it's just pretty easy, at least for a while. I started a berserker last night and so far can just face tank everything.
Quoting: psycho_driverQuoting: JuliusWorks fine here on Manjaro as well. Graphics take some time to get used to, but the game is a solid loot driven ARPG. The main problem is that it is way too easy. Even on legendary mode you can just walk through it at least with my character build. Maybe I got a strange unbalanced skill combination by accident?
I have a feeling it's just pretty easy, at least for a while. I started a berserker last night and so far can just face tank everything.
Unless something's changed in the past couple of months, the default "Normal" mode is pretty easy. However, "Heroic", the next level up doubles monster health and gives them a 50% damage boost. At this level, you'll have to start kiting some of the tougher monsters or die. Epic doubles it again, and Legendary doubles it to an 800% boost in monster health. Early game here can be a bit tedious, as every monster needs massive kiting until you unlock stronger spells/abilities/gear.
I play on Heroic only. It's a SUPERB game that I've sunk nearly 40 hours into. Big thanks to Liam for helping the dev sort the Linux launcher script, because that stopped me playing this for over a year (I was on Ubuntu 18.04 at the time, but only 18.10 and later were supported, until Liam noticed that the dev was calling static libraries instead of targeting the Steam runtime libraries).
See more from me