Enter the Chronosphere was one of my more anticipated games for this year. Combining turn-based tactics with bullet-hell elements is an interesting idea that draws my shooter-focused brain into the strategic world.
Chronospheres are spherical worlds with increasingly bent realities that warp inhabitants and the terrain you stand on. There are currently four factions of enemies (with more minor ones along the way) that you can come across. There is an array of weird creatures such as toy birds and pistol-wielding monkeys.
Your goal is to make it to the centre of these distorted realms and kill the hearts of the chronospheres, to hopefully stop more planets being sucked into their glitched grasp. The theme of warped realities intertwines with the gameplay as you progress further into the game, as enemy factions increasingly combine and floors become painted with status effects and curses through the Instability mechanic.
While Enter the Chronosphere is billed as a turn-based tactics game, its gameplay is better described as Superhot if it were a twin-stick shooter. Time only moves when you move, but your decisions are still based on shooting down bullet-hell-esque enemies and dodging the hail of projectiles that come back.
Each “turn” is about a half second of real-time action, and you have to consider bullet travel time and character movement speed. It plays super quick and feels streamlined as your decisions are all about where to move and what to shoot instead of managing tons of stats and menus. On the surface, it’s an easy-to-understand game.
The metagame in Enter the Chronosphere is done through mission objectives rather than a grindy skill tree. You’re given a set of tasks at home base, such as “kill enemies with a melee weapon” or “take this item” – and with each mission you complete you unlock more stuff to play with and new enemies to encounter.
It goes pretty deep too; with my multiple victories, I still haven’t unlocked everything, and that’s with 20 hours logged at the time of writing.
Weapons vary from basic assault rifles to void-powered angel wings, all of which can be upgraded with modifiers such as elemental damage, explosive bullets, split-shots, and more.
The weapon variety alone is pretty good, but with the mod system, even your basic katana can run vastly different each time you take it. There are three different characters to choose from with their own movement abilities and passive stats. My favourite one is Lily the lizard with her tongue grappling hook and affinity for melee weapons.
If that wasn’t enough run variation, there are also passive character upgrades for smaller benefits, such as movement speed, elemental immunity, and active abilities that can clear bullets from the battlefield or spawn a mole army.
Enter the Chronosphere is already packed with things to play with, and I’m sure the arsenal will only get larger as early access goes on.
As development continues, there are a couple of things I would like to see worked on. I think there should be more incentive to full-clear floors, as right now unless there are items I want to grab, there is not a lot of reason to not rush the exit, especially if I already have a powerful setup. Deaths should also ideally be made more predictable with indicators and previews, I think.
Enter the Chronosphere is my first strong personal GOTY contender, with its early access debut impressing me thanks to its level of polish and satisfying, varied gameplay. I am very excited to watch this game progress!
Enter the Chronosphere is out now on Steam PC (Mac, Win), and we played via access kindly provided by the developer!
