"If you operate the clock tower, you can return to normality."
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.
The game was released on Steam
in early access on December 19, 2019 and is still in early development.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 Flinging 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- Magikarp Power: Phoenix Kick costs 4 mana to play and does middling damage... but every time you use it, its power increases by 4 permanently. 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:
- 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 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.
- 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 downnote , 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 their final action when you end the turn.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
