Video Game / Chrono Ark

1 Following

Chrono Ark is a party-based Roguelike Deckbuilding Game developed and published by the Korean indie company Al Fine games. You play as Lucy, the Amnesiac Hero working with an investigation team fighting their way through an onslaught of monsters while gathering "Time Shades'' to run a Clock Tower Time Machine in the floating domed city that was humanity's last retreat from the apocalyptic fog which had corrupted the planet. If successful, perhaps civilization can be restored to normal.

The gameplay is a combination of deck-building roguelikes (such as Slay the Spire) and party-based RPGs. You command a party of up to four heroes with unique abilities and playstyles who can be leveled up and given skill cards individually, but they all share a single mana pool and their skills are shuffled into the same deck.

Note: Chrono Ark contains a First-Episode Twist that recontextualizes the entire story, which means that a lot of tropes below contain spoilers past the first successful run. Please beware before venturing below.

The game was released on Steam in early access on December 19, 2019 and entered full release on May 3, 2024. Two DLC packs were also released, Summer Twilight and High Roller, which include character skins, new item unlocks, and alternate starting skills for Lucy.

---

Chrono Ark contains examples of:

• Amusement Park of Doom: The Bloody Park stage is an abandoned amusement park filled with Monster Clowns and Living Toys. And sexy clowns with baseball bats.
• Animated Armor: The Living Armor boss.
• Apocalypse How: Class 3B. The Catastrophe is a sudden ice age where temperatures dropped into below hundred degrees Celsius.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: For taking place in a futuristic setting with advanced technology, the weapons most characters fight with are extremely anachronistic.
• Beach Episode: The Summer Twilight DLC, giving swimsuits to several characters and adding an alternate boss event to the Bloody Park where some of them run into trouble at a beach.
• Bittersweet Ending: Defeating the True Final Boss unleashes the 'true' clock tower and finally lets the survivors leave. However, there were some unfortunate loose ends that led to tragedy:
  • Pressel has fully succumbed to her Knight Templar tendencies, and has begun a purge of non-desirables (It begins with killing the asshole who tried to murder everyone on the Ark). It is implied she will start the new world's primary (and hate-corrupted) religion. Ilya tries dating her, because he's also an asshole.
  • Johan went insane with his virtual memories of his beloved 'Alice' and tried to Murder The Hypoteneuse. He's in prison.
  • Phoenix's death meant Chiyo didn't inherit his memories, and she doesn't live long due her terminal illness.
  • There was also that one unfortunate guard who got thrown into the 'true' clock tower long before it was ready. He's Deader than Dead.
• Boss Banter: Some bosses have dialog for certain investigators if they are in your party while battling them. For example, The Witch comments if Sizz' doll Eve attacks, calling it a cute doll.
• Casino Episode: The High Roller DLC, which includes gambling-themed attire plus a couple of Playboy Bunny outfits, and an alternate boss whose main gimmick allows you to potentially win gold through playing what amounts to blackjack.
• Cerberus: One of the first bosses you can possibly encounter. Considering it guards the way to more of the Twisted Land where death awaits around any given corner, it's very fitting.
• Circus of Fear: Bloody Park in general is an amusement park driven insane by the Twisted Fog. Even those who aren't violent are clearly unhinged.
• Clock Tower: A very prominent one in the center of the Ark that doubles as a Time Machine. Most of the plot revolves around getting the clock tower to operate.
• Clockwork Creature: The Clockwork Hedgehog enemy has a visible Wind-Up Key.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: There exist five item rarities and they match the standard; White, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold in ascending rarity.
• Counter-Attack:
  • Lian's Grand Reflex passive encourages this. Most of her attack skills have a delayed effect and if an enemy attacks before it resolves, the enemy deals reduced damage, Lian's attack will trigger, and the player will be given an extra mana point next turn.
  • Ruby and Sapphire and The Sacred Karaela bosses sometimes gain a counterattack status buff, triggering immediately when you attack them.
• Cult: The Pharos Cult is a major antagonistic group found on every single level except the last. They all sport similar grayish-purple attire and display the cult symbol somewhere. Almost every member except the leader wears a mask or otherwise conceals their face. Before the apocalypse, they began as The Ashen order, a cult of terrorists raiding major corporations 'for justice and equality'. They started out with justifiable anger at really corrupt megacorporations, but poor hiring standards meant the cult devolved into Bomb-Throwing Anarchists who gleefully murder civilians. No-one, in-universe, treats them as anything but a bunch of crazies wearing stupid masks and flinging Molotovs.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The Weakening Potion gives a character 10% increased damage received.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts:
  • Azar specializes in this. His playstyle involves him making Illusion Swords, 0-Cost attacks that deal minor damage at best. However, he has tons of ways to produce them, making it possible for him to conjure six or seven swords in a single turn. Suddenly, those 0-Cost cards add up in damage, and he can buff them further to crit, be produced when other characters play cards, or even cast alongside ally attacks. Many of his skills revolve around playing Illusion Swords, and have powerful buffs for playing as many of them as possible.
  • Trisha doesn't do a lot of damage by herself, as many of her cards are 1-Cost attacks that deal Scratch Damage. However, her passive Double Team makes it so that after casting five cards of her own, the player can cast any card in their hand for free. This gives Trisha unrivaled synergy with the other members of the party, since she can play down her useful, but low damaging cards to make room for one giant swing. Azar and Trisha also have strong synergy, since her low-cost cards make her a great way to generate Illusion Swords for Azar.
• Degraded Boss: The Living Armor, which serves as a Warm-Up Boss, can come back as a normal enemy in the final area of the game.
• Deuteragonist: While Lucy is the protagonist, the major focus character is Azar. Lucy is the Child of Prophecy, who must be led to the Clock Tower to save the world. Azar refers to her as the "hero of this world", the entire simulation is built around her success, and Azar's role in the game is one of many party members to pick from. The bulk of character development is shifted to Azar however, to the point where the majority of story cutscenes focus on him and his development. As well, the history of the simulation and how it came to be like this is explored alongside his own backstory, with reveals often connecting the two of them together.
• Discard and Draw:
  • The Fountain of Oblivion lets you replace all of Lucy's skills in the deck with new ones.
  • As a literal example, the game gives you the option to discard any card in hand to draw a new card once every turn.
  • There are several draw skills Lucy can obtain which discard some or all cards in your hand in order to draw new cards.
• Distant Finale: The final scene of the game takes place several years after the Ark Project survivors awakened and rebuilt society.
• Double Jump: Every swiftness or vitality scroll used gives Lucy the ability to jump one more time. Both jumping and double jumping are entirely useless features, but it does give you an achievement if you can jump four times.
• Due to the Dead: After the Ark Project survivors wake up, they erect a memorial to the 600 virtual avatars who sacrificed themselves to awaken them.
• Effortless Achievement: You earn the "Jump!" achievement for making Lucy jump, which can be easily obtained with a single press of a button.
• Equipment Upgrade: An Enchant Table or Scroll can provide a positive enhancement to an equipment, which results into additional random stat boosts.
• Fire/Ice Duo: The twin swordswomen and Dual Boss Ruby and Sapphire have fire and ice powers respectively. Both give debuffs that make cards more difficult to play; Ruby causes every skill played to deal damage to its caster while Sapphire increases the mana cost of a hero's skills. The effects stack and are very effective at crippling your party.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Cryomancer, Pyromancer, and Electomancer are an enemy trio with a Shared Life-Meter and they do exactly what their names imply.
• First-Episode Twist: The entire game takes place in a virtual reality simulation that humanity made to help endure a climate disaster. Azar also retains his memories between loops, and is the Big Bad Friend. This information is dumped on the player after their first victory, and from there the story becomes an Ontological Mystery.
• Flanderization: In-Universe. What happened to the people populating the Ark's simulation when it was rewritten into the "Clock Tower" scenario that the main game takes place in. When the transfer occurred, many people had their personalities altered or corrupted, emphasizing certain traits or adding new ones into their personality. The result is that the denizens of the Chrono Ark are far less rounded than their initial personalities. For example, the cheerful but still grounded Annie became the ditzy Wrench Wench Miss Chain, and the shivering nerd Hein became a cackling Ax-Crazy swordsman.
• Floating Clocks: Upon death, the screen fills with these before Lucy wakes up in her bed.
• Floating Continent: The Ark is a floating city. After the builders disappeared, it remains a mystery what technology is used to keep it aloft, much to the anxiety of those living on it.
• Fog of Doom: A black fog is the apocalyptic force that annihilated human society. In-game, it's present in every battle that takes too long, dealing increasing damage to your party every turn once a turn limit is met - it also prevents healing past your pain gauge.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: It becomes apparent that Lucy is trapped in one, as time rewinds and most of the world rewinds when she's killed, rolling back their memories. When the story starts, she's on her 499th run. And sadly, using the Clock Tower doesn't solve this, as it simply orders the world to rewind and rollback memories usual. By Act 2, the cast has been looping for 48 years.^note Based on some quick math, ~2500 runs divided by ~50 years equals ~50 runs/year means each run likely takes one week.
• Hard Mode Perks: The game is generally harder to clear in Expert difficulty, but you gain extra Credits when a boss is defeated.
  • There's also the Blood Mist, which you can invoke at campfires during any regular run which stacks various difficulty spikes such as increased enemy health and more expensive shops, in exchange for benefits like relic pouches after boss kills. Each invocation unlocks a relic the first time you do it, and clearing the fourth level at the White Grave gives another unlock and an achievement.
• Healing Checkpoint: Interacting with a campfire restores a bit of your alive party members' health, revives fallen allies with a portion of their health, and restores a charge of Lucy's necklace (only on Normal difficulty). There's also a nearby book in every camping site in case you want to create a Suspend Save.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The avatars inside the virtual world of the Ark Project collectively agree to sacrifice themselves to awaken their real world counterparts and ensure the survival of humanity.
• Justified Tutorial: In the first "proper" run from the Ark, Azar offers Lucy the chance to go to the training grounds, and agreeing will bring up the tutorial section with Phoenix as your instructor. Talking to Phoenix anytime in later runs lets you replay the tutorial.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Heroes don't die instantly when going below 0 hp. Instead, they will be considered at "Death's Door", a system fans of the roguelike genre might recognize. Any further damage will cause the hero to faint unless something is granting them the "Faint Resist" stat and luck is on their side. Life can go negative, so it often takes some work to get allies back to 1 hp.
• Light 'em Up:
  • Pressel uses divine light-themed powers both to heal allies and deal large amounts of damage to her foes.
  • The Sacred Karaela is a boss that uses similar divine light powers against the heroes, with more emphasis on the offense than the defense.
• Light Is Not Good: The Sacred Karaela, in contrast with the rather dark bosses and enemies who make up the rest of the White Grave stage, is a bright, sun-colored, almost angelic being who summons Christian crosses and purifies her foes. She's just as dangerous and violent as the other White Grave bosses.
• Lost Technology: An instantaneous example; the technology that went into building the Ark was lost when the founders mysteriously disappeared. For 80 years, no attempts at reverse engineering have been successful.
• Macrogame:
  • The Credits you earn from defeating the stages' bosses accumulate across runs. With them, you can buy permanent upgrades or new core features that make the next runs easier, or buy items that may appear randomly later on.
  • The Vault of Time is a special event choice that allows you to "preserve" a copy of an item from your current run, so that if your party is annihilated, you'd still start with that preserved item on your next run.
  • Unlockable Investigators remain permanently available in future runs, giving you more options in your starting line-up.
• Magikarp Power: Phoenix Kick costs 4 mana to play and initially does middling damage. However, its damage increases with each use for that run. If you can get lucky and acquire this skill for another investigator early, you can assign it as a fixed skill and really bring the hurt.
• Making the Choice for You: Usually used as a form of punishment for failing to engage with certain boss mechanics.
  • While fighting the Witch boss, if you refuse to choose an ally to give her curse to, she casts the curse on everyone.
  • The Pharos Leader boss requires you to cast an attack skill from hand on an ally every turn. If you don't, a random attack skill from hand will be cast on a random ally at the end of turn. In some rare cases, this can be a strategic option because the random skill isn't cast with your mana.
  • The Forgotten King's second phase causes him to summon three lightning pillars that add three 0-Cost Swiftness cards into Lucy's hand. Similar to the Witch, these cards are damaging attacks that can be dropped on a party member of your choice, and if you fails to eliminate them from her hand, they cast on everyone.
• The Mole: Trisha was this while operating undercover inside the Pharos order, collecting intel for the investigation team. The Pharos bosses call her out on it.
• Monster Clown: Many of the enemies and bosses in the Bloody Park stage are clowns.
• Monster Compendium: The "Monster" tab of the Encylopedia menu lets you view entries for the monsters you previously fought, sorted by the area where they're found. Each entry details a monster's name, artwork, stats, debuff resistances, and a short Flavor Text of their backstory or lore.
• Non-Action Protagonist: Lucy is a little girl, and thus lacks the ability to fight in any capacity outside of the challenge run involving her. Her role in combat is to manage attacks, control mana, and strategize. This is embodied in the fact that many of her cards are incredibly useful abilities that deal zero damage- searching for cards, increasing her mana count, or playing multiple cards for a reduced cost. As well, Lucy gains new unique cards whenever her draw is levelled up, allowing her cards to remain relevant and valuable throughout the entire game.
• One-Hit Kill: Two playable characters have access to a skill which one hit kills any regular enemy, and bosses from 40% of their health. However, one of them costs 4 mana to use this way and has a delay, and the other is permanently removed from the deck on use and becomes more expensive with each completed stage.
• Out-of-Turn Interaction: Your investigators have higher initiative than most enemies, but ultimately all enemies and allies play in the same turn. Every time you play a card with a purple mana-cost indicator, the enemy's action timers will tick down^note cards with 'Swiftness' have blue mana-cost indicators, and won't pass any time, and they'll perform their corresponding actions when a timer reaches 0. In addition, some enemies are even faster than the player and can attack at the start of the turn. Conversely, some enemy attacks take so long that they can only perform them when the turn ends.
• Pumpkin Person: The Pumpkinhead Giant foe has a pumpkin for a head.
• Random Effect Spell: The Scroll of Vitality has Lucy play an entirely random skill from those she can learn. Effects include increased max mana, casting random ally skills, or doing absolutely nothing.
• Relationship Values: Lucy can give gifts to her fellow Investigators and develop bonds with them, in the process learning about their pasts. The main benefit is to give Investigators more two more options for skills for their first level up.
• The Reveal: Clyne used Brain Uploading on the colonists so he could freeze their bodies perfectly, but Phoenix went crazy and destroyed some of the pods and all the scanning equipment. The Ark itself is hard-coded to self-destruct the moment it ends, deleting the engrams. So now, the inhabitants have the sadistic choice of either living in a lotus eater machine and letting humanity die out, or risking it all knowing that some won't survive the process due to their pods malfunctioning, and humanity may still be screwed because the ice age may not have ended. Azar freaked out and tried to create said Lotus-Eater Machine, along with his extra clone.
• Reviving Enemy:
  • Snow Giants turn into Snow Giant Remnants upon death, and you have a short time to kill the remnant before it regenerates back into a full health Snow Giant.
  • An Ultimate Illusion Sword will revive itself if you play five skills before destroying the other one.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • The Witch enjoys putting Lucy (and the player) through this. Her gimmick is giving a "Horrendous Pain" curse card to the player every turn, who must choose a hero to cast it on. It causes a painful Damage Over Time effect. The heroes will respond to your mouseover, some confidently accepting it while others protest quite passionately. A few heroes will even cry out in pain. The Witch doesn't hold back from taunting your dilemma throughout the fight.^note Back in Run #12, Lucy had Cutscene Incompetence due to her inexperience and fear, forcing you to first choose the character with the lowest health because she demanded it, and then not choosing at all.
  • Joker will take one of your cards and turn it into his attack, forcing you to choose between playing something that will harm you and keeping it in your hand to replicate.
  • Every Illusion Sword forces Lucy to decide who choose who it targets. Ultimate Illusion Swords get a permanent passive buff each turn, but Lucy has to pick one of two.
• Science Fantasy: Includes the likes of a Phoenix and a witch, but also includes time travel and a domed city. Science and research play a central role in the plot, as does faith. Technology is modern to futuristic, but most characters still fight with archaic weapons and they are often glowing in ways that imply some modern technology went into their design. Sources of power are usually vague, so it's often left unclear if something has a mystical source or if it's just Weird Science.
• Secret Character: Investigators later on have specific or complex unlock conditions such as clearing a biome for the first time, defeating a boss repeatedly, or raising other Investigators' Friendship levels.
• Signature Move: Each character can assign a Fixed Skill, which puts that skill card next to that character's portrait instead of waiting for it to be drawn. Fixed skills have to be chosen carefully; in addition to the extra mana cost, only one fixed skill may be played per turn (unless you have an Innate Fixed skill, which can be played separately), and on Expert most fixed skills have a 2-turn cooldown.
  • Johan in particular has a unique fixed skill that is weaker than standard attacks but will refresh its cooldown every time you play a 1+ mana card among other boosts, meaning with sufficient mana and the right Fixed Skill buffs you can unleash a spray-and-pray of attacks.
• Smashing Watermelons: If you talk to her in the Ark, Pressel may mention the game of "smashing watermelons", describing it as a beloved summer activity in an old eastern country.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: The Pharos cult leader has weak attacks, but her unique passive forces you to play an attack card on your own investigators at least once per turn. Ending the turn without attacking yourself and with attack cards in hand will cause her to select and use an attack card at random. During the mid-game, she'll outright brainwash an Investigator to fight for her, who then uses a random skill from the entire deck per turn for four turns. To make the brainwashing wear off faster, you have to use those self-attack on the enthralled Investigator.
• Suspend Save: Finding a book in the Twisted Lands and saving with it creates a save that can only be loaded once (the tutorial even warns you about this). Naturally, the game sends you back to the main menu after doing so. However, you are also given the choice between continuing from where you left off or restarting to the beginning.
• Synchronization: Some enemy duos will have the life-link trait. This means you can't kill one before the other, but you can use multi-hit to beat them down.
• Shared Life-Meter: Although visually still represented with their own life bars, certain bosses and enemies function exactly as this. All changes in life total from any source are shared among the linked characters. Area of Effect attacks will deal double or triple damage depending on the number of foes like this.
• Shout-Out:
  • Clearing the game with Iron Heart earns you the "You Shall Not Pass!" achievement.
  • Clearing the game with Leryn earns the "Leap Through Time" achievement, which would make Leryn The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
  • The Yummy Carrot Relic has the flavor text "Almond Almond", referencing Usada Pekora.
• Sigil Spam: The longer you look at a character that's related to the Pharos Cult, the more instances of the Pharos Cult symbol you'll find. This sigil has also made its way to some unexpected places, such as the expert difficulty icon.
• Sprint Shoes: When used, a Swiftness Scroll increases Lucy's movement speed during the current stage.
• Time Machine: The Clock Tower is said to be this. Because the operators disappeared and no one knows how to run it anymore, Lucy and the investigation team are forced to collect "time shades" to get it to run.
• Unknown Item Identification: Potions and scrolls have unknown effects and must be identified by either using the item, using a scroll of identification, or paying to have them identified at a shop. Potions and scrolls look different, but the textures given to each potion and scroll type are randomized every run.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Beating a boss can potentially drop a relic which grants you use of their particular mechanic in a lesser way, such as adding the Witch's damaging curse to your hand every two turns.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Golem and Witch of the Misty Forest in differing ways, though both will punish you dearly if you don't adhere to their specific mechanics which are relatively straightforward. The Golem hits hard and can stun characters, but successfully handling its module mechanic can give you a skill, making this a challenge of card draw and mana management - overload yourself at the wrong time, and the Golem will crack down even harder on you. The Witch tests your ability to deal damage quickly, since her mounting pain debuffs will overwhelm you eventually if you take too long killing her minions instead of her.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The story's climax reveals that the people of the domed city are just digital constructs based on people in the real world to keep their minds active while they're in cryostasis, and will remain trapped there when the originals awaken; the final conflict is the Program Master arguing that they'd all be better off trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine while Lucy is convinced by her allies that it's worth dying to revive the originals so their lives have meaning. Furthermore, the logs unlocked afterwards reveal that Clyne, Lucy's father and one of the heads of the Ark project, was fully aware that the duplicates would object to spending their lives as prisoners in a simulation but went through with it anyways, even forcing an underling that thought it was unethical into cryostasis after she slipped down some stairs while running from him with evidence.

---