Chronoscript: The Endless End Preview - Innovative Metroidvania with Unique Perspective

With the high popularity of indie metroidvania titles, developer DeskWorks decided to explore a unique take on the genre with Chronoscript: The Endless End. Playing with a meta perspective, the game looks promising with an enticing concept that affects both its narrative and gameplay elements.

Captivated by the Story

Called upon by a new author that he didn’t know of, taciturn protagonist Frederick G. Muller goes all the way to their remote residence in the mountains to act as their editor. Once he gets there, however, he’s bitten by a mosquito and instantly loses consciousness.

He wakes up in a very peculiar condition: trapped in the manuscript of the vampire mistress of this distinct estate, the very author Viola S. Chambers. This work, which is called The Endless End, is still being penned to this day, and it’ll be up to the player to seek a way out by exploring its thousands of years of history.

Chronoscript: The Endless End is shown from two different perspectives, one of which is 2D and the other 3D. The real world can be seen in three dimensions at specific scenes, but the gameplay within the book is 2D, just like usual for games in the metroidvania genre.

Within the spread pages of the book, the player will advance while seeing the texture and materials. Even the connections between pages are intentionally misaligned to make it all have a very physical feeling to it. In the early portions of the game that the developer has already showcased, it’s possible to see a brownish, sepia-like color in the backgrounds and a coloring akin to old book illustrations that help emphasize this feeling.

Perspective that Can Be Played With

The visuals are just part of what makes this perspective unique, however. As the player advances through the game, specific situations come to change how things work, bringing some new challenges that may prove fresh. While it’s still early to know the full extent of the game, a playable demo build provided by the developers teases some of it. During a fight against an early-game boss, the perspective completely shifted after some time, making the protagonist and the enemy fall towards what was once the ceiling.

When this happens, the boss enters the ink and starts jumping upward in an aggressive manner. Even before this shift, however, the creature had already been forcing the screen to get misaligned by hitting the walls with its tackles. This may seem relatively small, but it has the potential to be explored further and create some interesting elements to the gameplay.

During a fight against an early-game boss, the perspective completely shifted after some time, making the protagonist and the enemy fall towards what was once the ceiling.

Chronoscript’s unique art style and meta perspective is par for the course when it comes to the developer. Before the new game, DeskWorks came up with RPG Time: The Legend of Wright, which turned a pen-and-paper adventure into a videogame. Their previous title featured a similar meta perspective to it, but the gameplay was significantly different, exploring a variety of gameplay styles to convey the unique fantasy of a pen-and-paper RPG.

A Metroidvania Work With Potential

Behind the game’s development team, there are also some interesting names to keep in mind. Bayonetta’s Mari Shimazaki is responsible for the 3D character designs/modeling direction, and legendary composer Yasunori Mitsuda handles the soundtrack alongside other composers from Procyon Studio like Shunsuke Tsuchiya and Mariam Abounnasr.

While the demo was relatively brief, the general concept felt captivating. There are many details that feel like they may have deeper meanings and more significant purpose going forward. For instance, the vampire author is connected to tubes that pump blood. What is the story behind her condition and is perhaps her immortality part of why she hired the editor?

Similarly, it was curious to see that all enemies in the demo were somehow tied to the concept of reading books. There was an encyclopedia of sorts explaining a few details behind them, which may be even further explored in the final game and perhaps with unique aspects to each biome.

There were also upgrades to power up the protagonist and a soulslike structure for losing unspent experience points when defeated. It’s necessary to get them back from wherever the player was defeated. Beyond those, there are also upgrades tied to specific progress, like double jump and the ability to dive into ink to move around and explore areas that would otherwise be unreachable.

It will be interesting to see how the developers will come together to create this experience, and explore different eras through multiple portions of this manuscript. How many things will change from an area to another based on this concept remains to be seen, and the same can be said for how well the game can explore the opportunities in its meta perspective. Even so, there is undeniable potential for Chronoscript: The Endless End to be a truly unique experience.