Chrono Gear: Warden of Time news & patch notes

Hello Wardens!

Today's update addresses several minor bugs and oversights. Thank you again for your reports!

General:

- Added three dialog lines that were missing from the Japanese retranslation.

- Multiple dialog boxes should no longer overlap each other if the player enters a dialog zone before a previous dialog zone conversation has finished.

- Prevented softlocks when using low/0% damage as a Custom difficulty parameter.

- Addressed an edge case where the filtered music effect during a KO rewind against certain bosses might not properly clear the effect.

Kronii:

- Fixed an oversight where Kronii's mana always regenerated at Overclocked speed regardless of difficulty setting.

Doorway to Nowhere:

- Fixed the physics interpolation on the drop chain platforms.

Battleship Aquamarine:

- Added extra checks for ensuring projectiles are not destroyed when colliding with their source, which was a specific issue with the Defense Tower boss.

Intermission:

- Restored the trigger for the alternate boss intro dialog when the player fails/rewinds.

- The boss should no longer be damaged by her own Iron Wing summons, and she will skip her throwing state entirely if there are too many Iron Wings in the arena.

Case Closed:

- The duplicates of the boss will now properly despawn when falling off the ship.

Dark Nest:

- In the 3D flight sections, Iron Wings should no longer immediately dive downwards when spawning on Overclocked.

Steel on Steel:

- Additional checks and fixes for the background swapping between phases.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- Laplus shadow clones should be less likely to spawn invisible.

Wardenのみなさん、こんにちは！

Chrono Gear: Warden of Timeをお楽しみいただきありがとうございます！

今回のアップデートで、日本語ローカライズを改善し、一部のセリフやテキストがより自然な流れになるように調整を行いました。

これにより、オリジナルのテキストと同じように、没入感のあるストーリーを日本語でさらにお楽しみいただけるようになりました！

現在、アップデートされた翻訳はベータブランチにて公開中です。ぜひ皆様のご意見やご感想をお聞かせください！

サポートいただいたholo Indieのスタッフの皆様、そしてフィードバックをお寄せくださったプレイヤーの皆様に、心より感謝申し上げます。

また、現在他のいくつかの言語への翻訳作業も進めており、こちらにつきましても随時最新情報をお届けしていく予定です。

Hello Wardens!

We have refined the Japanese localization of the game so that some dialog lines and text will flow more naturally together.

It's important to us that the story is equally enjoyable in Japanese as the original text, so we hope that this update will bring us closer to that goal.

The updated translation is currently on the beta branch, and we'd like to hear your thoughts!

We'd like to extend our thanks to both the holo Indie staff for their assistance and to our players for your feedback!

We would also like to mention that we are currently working on additional translations to a few other languages, and we will keep everyone updated on this.

Hello Wardens!

This update is aimed primarily at addressing a crash in Tower of Darkness. Thank you for letting us know about it!

General:

- Fixed a one frame camera delay when rewinding.

Kronii:

- Kronii should now face the proper direction when going left through doors.

Eternity Sanctum:

- Collecting the final Golden Gear will no longer "kill" the mirror in the basement and prevent Kronii's reflection from updating.

Chloe's Beach Race:

- Additional checks are run for music changes, which should prevent the music during the race from reverting to the standard Tidal Camp track after dying.

- Removed the invisible tidal wave.

Tower of Darkness

- Fixed null reference errors on the gravity mines.

- Added scene hierarchy checks that will hopefully reduce the chances of the game crashing after collecting the Golden Gear.

- A suspend save will be created as soon as the Golden Gear is collected in this stage as a failsafe in the event of a crash. The suspend save is cleared after the results screen.

Steel on Steel:

- The water shader in the ending cutscene should now match the final arena.

- The water that the player walks on is slightly more opaque to make it easier to spot the false shadow.

Enjoy improved performance, physics interpolation for higher framerates, and even tougher difficulty options in our latest update for Chrono Gear: Warden of Time!

For a full breakdown of what's new, check out our previous announcement post:

Thank you to everyone who tried out the new build and helped us snuff out most of the remaining bugs! We will keep an eye on anything else that might crop up.

In the meantime, the Steam Summer Sale is live and Chrono Gear is now 25% off for the next week! Not only that, but other holo Indie games are also participating!

You can check out the full holo Indie library below:

store.steampowered.com/publisher/holo_Indie

Version 1.1 is our biggest update yet, combining true support for higher framerates, a plethora of performance optimizations, and a new Overclocked difficulty setting for experienced Wardens.

We are currently testing this update on the beta branch, and we could use your help to make sure everything still works correctly!

If you're interested, you can switch to the Beta branch by right clicking the game in your Steam library, selecting Properties, and clicking the Game Versions & Betas tab.

Here's a breakdown of what's new!

Physics Interpolation

We have continued working hard on various bugfixes, tweaks, and performance optimizations, including proper physics interpolation. Our biggest thanks goes to tryptech for the extensive refactoring of numerous script files to get this working smoothly.

This change ended up being a lot more involved than we thought, but we think the results are worth it for those playing Chrono Gear above 60fps!

Check out the bottom of this post for a comprehensive breakdown of our changes and fixes!

Overclocked Difficulty

One of our core level designers Will has also cooked up an insane new difficulty setting above Proud. At first it was built as a joke difficulty, but we ultimately balanced it to be a very intense but deliberately balanced game mode for players who have grown deeply accustomed to Kronii's moveset.

In Overclocked, almost every enemy moves and attacks significantly faster, deals more damage, and has less slowdown while affected by Stasis. Kronii's time powers also drain faster, requiring more strategic timing to use them to their full potential. To make up for this, her attacks deal additional damage.

This results in faster and more intense combat encounters where frequently alternating between Haste and Stasis are necessary for survival.

There are no rewards attached to this difficulty setting, so feel free to switch in and out of it at your leisure while playing. Just be warned that it gets super intense in levels with a lot of enemies! (I died more times to the first Armored Rangoon on Overclocked than I did to Alter Laplus on Proud...)

To unlock Overclocked, complete the game at least once or enter the Konami code on the title screen.

Full Changelog

General:

- There is now a preload screen at launch while particles and effects are cached.

- Added retro render scale options in the Display Settings to adjust shader performance impact.

- Kronie Wheels can be destroyed with attacks.

- The Records data now tracks boosts (BDHCs).

- Added high framerate support with physics interpolation.

- Camera behavior adjusted globally to be smoother.

- When notes are magneted to the player, they will collect instantly when offscreen.

- Bow platforms, rails, and Time Horse have the camera look ahead.

- Collecting a Golden Gear now destroys nearby enemies.

- Reflected projectiles that split into smaller projects now inherit the player as their parent.

- Collectibles already collected in a mission now despawn on reload or respawn to checkpoint, preventing note duplication.

- Haste / Stasis superlative counts corrected.

- Fixed stage timer persisting while cutscene flag is set.

- Scaling and Rotating gimmicks optimized.

- Removed pause delay for consecutive cutscenes.

- Hub collectibles no longer drop notes, and a similar particle effect is used in their place.

- Fast input no longer skips screen transitions.

- Other performance improvements and optimizations.

UI:

- When skipping a cutscene, its full dialog is now added to the Log menu.

- In the shop menu, song titles now scroll if they're too long.

- Added missing Japanese translation for the Grave Gunner codex entry.

- HUD Messages always render above other UI.

- Midstage dialog could persist when changing stages.

- Stabilized search radar in The Maze, Autumn Harvest, and The Final Ascent.

- HUD no longer flashes for one frame on scene load.

- Log menu now always opens to the newest line.

- Enemy healthbar drain animation cleaned up.

- Fixed a typo in Sana's codex entry in Japanese.

- Settings menu accepts mouse input again.

- Fixed Jukebox gear mouse interaction.

- The option to use suspend saves is hidden in Speedrun mode.

- The codes menu is hidden while in hub areas.

- Added dialog speed option in the display settings.

- You can now hold the Dash button to speed up dialog text.

- Input labels can now show multiple binds.

- Rebind controls menu option is styled more clearly as a selectable option.

- Fixed clickable checkboxes in the cheats menu.

- Fixed mouse interaction on reset stage menu.

- Fixed pause menu defaulting to first option.

Custom Difficulty:

- Reworked Custom Difficulty menu.

- Difficulty Menu correctly shows the difficulty option after changing custom difficulty settings.

- Added a new parameter for the Chrono Gear.

- Added file slot indicators for Custom Difficulty and Overclocked.

- Added live-updating visual indicators on custom difficulty menu options (e.g. Chrono Gear clock diagram).

Audio:

- Music speed/pitch scale resets when gameplay changes tracks.

- Adjusted loop points for the following music tracks:

- Magic Resort

- Starship ID

- The Maze

- Her Time is Now

- Baelz's Theme

- IRyS's Theme

- Ahoy?

- Castle Siege

- Galaxy Gourmet

- World Map

- The World Tree (Summer)

- The World Tree (Winter)

- Amelia’s Theme

Kronii:

- When the Chrono Gear is active, there is now a visual pulse when Future Strike's cooldown ends.

- Dive can new be used to dismount from ziplines.

- Dash and Teleport work when grinding on rails.

- Simultaneous grounded jump and dive input prioritizes jump.

- Dive cancelling behavior made more consistent.

- IRyS should warp to Kronii's position properly when she changes locations (such as entering doors).

- Added crouch cancelling.

- IRyS doesn't waste heals when rewinding to a checkpoint.

Enemies:

- All slime enemies' jump speed and windup speed will now scale with behavior difficulty.

- Bell Slime aggro radius is significantly increased at high difficulty.

- LFO moves significantly faster and has a faster windup at high difficulty.

- Ticky Ricky's punch no longer whiffs.

- Phantom Flame projectiles are consistantly rotated in the right direction.

- Geode Golem attack rate will now scale with behavior difficulty.

- Armored Rangoon attack rotation speed now scales with difficulty. It also has a more fitting sound effect when launching its lightning ball.

- Weird Takodachi poison buildup speed slightly reduced. It will now stop dealing poison damage immediately upon defeat, rather than when it disappears.

- Swamp Ghoul projectiles are consistantly rotated in the right direction.

- Chesseracts no longer spawn tiles directly on the player.

Stages:

To ensure that a Song Power score of at least 100 and a total score of 300 is reasonably possible in every level, note thresholds have been adjusted as follows:

- Storming the Sanctum: 80 -> 65

- The Top of Bell Tower: 120 -> 110

- The Great Space Bake: 150 -> 100

- Luknight of Darkness: 100 -> 85

- Ganmo's Grand Finale: 50 -> 35

- The Road to Civilization: 120 -> 110

- Roboco Strikes Back: 50 -> 40

- A Head Start: 120 -> 80

- Caravan of Darkness: 100 -> 70

- Song of Light and Darkness: 150 -> 130

- The KFP Games: 120 -> 110

- Defending the Sanctum: 100 -> 60

- Solitude: 100 -> 80

- Despair: 100 -> 65

Doorway to Nowhere:

- Enemy layout in this level will now scale with difficulty.

- Adjusted drop-chain platform behavior.

Bell Town:

- Enemy layout in this level will now scale with difficulty.

- Gear Platforms can now be dropped through consistently.

Carnival Railway:

- Additional enemies will appear in this stage at high difficulty.

- Trapeze swings no longer cause an instant double-jump when dismounted at high frame rates.

Sands of Time:

- Snake ladder no longer reverses climb animation sometimes.

- Kronii no longer clips through some background tiles.

The World Tree:

- Removed minor background flicker in each season.

The World Tree (Autumn Harvest):

- Additional enemies will now spawn at high difficulty.

- Made some minor adjustments to prevent snow SSRBs from falling through snow blocks.

Magic Resort:

- Fishing inputs are now aligned with user control settings.

Sky Tops:

- Ziplines no longer hide time power effects.

- Fixed gong platforms deactivating while the player is standing on a different one nearby.

Tidal Camp:

- Removed minor background flicker.

Depths of Atlantis:

- Removed minor background flicker.

Starship ID:

- Petting the Takodachi no longer causes odd wall interactions.

vs. Alter Laplus:

- Laplus can no longer get stuck with repel behavior enabled.

- It should no longer be possible for Laplus to be invincible when player wins the energy ball volley.

Castle Road:

- Removed pit out-of-bounds clip.

- Mumei gliders can no longer clip players into bridges.

Town Square:

- Kronii no longer disappears for a frame when exiting power washing.

Ducky God Arcade:

- Space zones reset 10% faster.

- Players can no longer get stuck in or be pushed into walls by air hockey platforms.

Symphonic Gallery:

- Slightly adjusted terrain in some areas to improve flow.

- Tubular bells no longer hide time power effects.

KFP Stadium (Another Time Traveler):

- Mirrored the close-up camera shot in the intro cutscene to match Kronii's position.

Solitude:

- Kroneye should gain aggro properly regardless of player position.

The Bunker:

- Adjusted indoor cutscene camera timing.

Entropy:

- The ending cutscene uses the newer water shader.

The Ancient Ones:

- The boss can no longer teleport the player while in their KO state.

Despair:

- Platform launchers no longer teleport the player if the platform was relaunched mid-ride.

Hope:

- The boss should now change direction towards the player more tightly, so it feels less like they're wandering aimlessly.

- The boss's respawn position is no longer directly over a geyser.

Dark Nest:

- Launch Pad behavior is now consistent across different frame rates.

Steel on Steel:

- Updated the mirror floor shader.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- The time warps near the end of the fight are no longer blocked by entering star portals or being in the ledge climbing animation.

Happy new year, Wardens! We hope everyone has been having a good start to the year so far!

Today's update adds an additional track to the Jukebox, adds a handful of fixes, and brings every other change from 1.24 onwards to the main branch.

General:

- An additional track has been added to the Jukebox, "Eleventh Hour", which is the music that plays before the Steel on Steel boss. It can be collected from the Sanctum hub after completing that fight.

Note that this CD is factored into 100% completion, so completed save files will need to collect the CD from the Sanctum hub in order to retain their completion percentage. (Additionally, if you have not played since 1.0.25, you will need to defeat a Hydra Block to add its new entry to the codex.)

Kronii:

- Air attacks can now be cancelled with a Dive.

- Added some vertical velocity damping to the dive's startup.

- The logic for dropping through platforms has been further optimized.

Town Square:

- Fixed a regression from 1.0.26 that was causing the warp gate trail near Calli to display incorrectly.

Steel on Steel:

- A failsafe is now in place during the second-to-last phase if the boss loses too much health before the transition to the final phase starts.

We hope everyone had a good holiday! Today's update addresses some of the more uncommon bugs and oversights.

If you'd like to help us test it out, right click Chrono Gear in your Steam library, select Properties, and in the Betas tab, select "testing - For new experimental builds" under Beta Participation.

If everything looks good, we'll push this onto the main branch in a day or two.

Thank you again for your reports!

General:

- Door transitions should feel smoother if entered with run lead enabled in the camera settings.

- Fixed some instances of warp gate lines appearing for one frame before they're properly drawn.

- Widened the input conflict prompt.

- Fixed mouse input in the stage confirmation menu of the alternate world map.

Enemies:

- Fixed a typo in the Volcanic Eel codex entry.

- Sentry Hands should be affected by Stasis again.

Castle Road:

- Fixed one of the bridge platforms having no collision when jumped into from a specific spot.

Town Square:

- Hanging signs should now rotate properly when struck.

vs. RBC4:

- Blocked backtracking after the final checkpoint is crossed, as the boss was behaving strangely in this situation.

Entropy:

- Fixed an issue introduced by the previous test build where activating Stasis during an hourglass rotation would reset the rotation to the beginning.

Dark Nest:

- The camera behavior after exiting a shmup section should be smoother.

Tower of Darkness:

- Increased the size of one of the frozen time areas in the final section.

Steel on Steel:

- Fixed an issue where being on a grind rail when the scenery shifts would not move the player to the next location.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- Restored the swarm of sword projectiles during the final rewind scene after they erroneously stopped spawning due to other changes.

Happy Friday, Wardens! This update adds a missing enemy codex, revamps the retro shader menu and contains additional fixes. We'll bring it to the main branch soon if everything checks out.

Thank you again!

General:

- Fixed incorrect scrolling in the Log menu.

- The retro shader menu has a new layout.

- The pause menu should no longer overlap other menus.

- Fixed the Codex animation for the Nekkomole.

- Added a missing Codex entry for the Hydra Block. This will affect the completion percentage in the Records menu and credits, so existing save files with 100% completion will need to destroy a Hydra Block pedestal to return to 100%.

Magic Resort:

- Fishing prompts no longer erroneously display while airborne.

Solitude:

- Addressed a specific situation where players could get softlocked behind impassible soul blocks.

Entropy:

- Hourglass switches that alter the scale of a room should no longer shift position sometimes when affected by Stasis.

Hope:

- Fixed IL timer not fully stopping in Speedrun mode.

Steel on Steel:

- Fixed IL timer not fully stopping in Speedrun mode.

Good evening, Wardens! We have an update on the test branch that addresses a few more oversights and uncommon bugs, optimizes the CRT shader, and adds a new shader for water surfaces.

If you'd like to help us test it out, right click Chrono Gear in your Steam library, select Properties, and in the Betas tab, select "testing - For new experimental builds" under Beta Participation.

If everything looks good, we'll push this onto the main branch in a day or two.

We also wanted to express our gratitude for your reviews on the store page, we've now surpassed 700 reviews! Thank you again for playing Chrono Gear! <3

General:

- A new shader effect is used for water surfaces that simulates movement of the water, with different environments having different movement speeds. (For example, the water has more motion in Tidal Camp and is nearly still in The Maze.)

- Fixed an edge case with Kronie Stacks that would cause them to zip through terrain.

- Fixed a rare occurance of the door storage glitch that would cause players to warp to the last used door when pressing Up anywhere in the level.

- Fixed inconsistency with the IL timer when rewinding to the start of a mission in speedrun mode.

Kronii:

- Performing a backdash or cartwheel into water and then dashing out of the water would previously cause Kronii to backdash or cartwheel in midair, which adversely affected her velocity.

UI:

- Corrected a typo in Friend's codex entry.

- Corrected a missing button icon for the U key.

- Optimized the expanded settings for the retro shader.

- Fixed a menu softlock that could happen if the Pause button was pressed too rapidly.

- The log menu should now scroll correctly when using an input other than the mouse.

Magic Resort:

- Fixed a visual oversight where the fishing prompt wouldn't hide after appearing.

Entropy:

- Fixed an issue where the final bottomless pit in the level was affected by hourglass rotations and would not function correctly until the player would rewind back to the final checkpoint.

Tower of Darkness:

- The bottom left portion of the hud should no longer be pushed downwards when rewinding in the final area.

Happy Friday, Wardens! Chrono Gear is 20% off in celebration of INDIE Live Expo along with other great holo Indie titles!

Check out the links below for a full library of both holo Indie games as well as other indies that are on sale for this event:

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/holo_Indie

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/INDIELiveExpo20251129

Lastly, nominations for the Steam Awards are in full swing, and it would be an honor for Chrono Gear to be considered! You can nominate your favorite games from this year at the link below:

https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations/2025

We hope everyone who celebrated Thanksgiving had a good holiday yesterday, and we wish you the best of weekends ahead!

Good evening, Wardens! We're happy to announce that Chrono Gear now has Steam trading card drops as well as badges, profile backgrounds, and emotes to collect!

A big shoutout to our wonderful border artists and sprite artists for the assets! Cheers!

Good evening Wardens! This update addresses some reported issues from the previous patch, and we should have it up on the main branch tomorrow if everything looks good.

Thank you again for your feedback!

General:

- Finalized the translations of the song names in the Jukebox.

- Fixed pooled effects with multiple animated sprites not completely resetting.

- Resolved some input stickiness cause by a recent change to input buffering.

- The icons for right shoulder inputs should now use the correct graphic.

- Added common fullscreen shortcuts.

- Additional settings have been added for the retro shader.

Enemies:

- Sentry Hands in Cursed Lands are a separate entity from the ones in Sands of Time and previously did not benefit from the bugfixes from previous updates; They now do.

Steel on Steel:

- The reflection of the ground in the final areas now deforms a bit more naturally when rotated.

Good morning Wardens! Today's update focuses on refinements to the Jukebox and Input menus, including a popular request for Jukebox music to continue playing in the hub areas. We have also addressed a few more oversights. Thank you again for the reports!

General

- Fixed a shader error introduced in the previous update with both the frozen time zones and the Sentry Hands.

- Fixed an oversight in Speedrun mode where the IL timer would remain frozen if Rewind to Checkpoint was selected after collecting a Golden Gear.

- The scaling of the Codex menu was tweaked so that it no longer expands horizontally for long codex names.

- During the credits, a progress wheel is now displayed when holding Start to skip it, which will now helpfully indicate that it's possible to skip in the first place.

- Fixed a handful of dialog lines that were not displaying in Japanese, including all of Bee Ame's lines.

- On the mission selection screen for Tidal Camp, Chloe's Beach Race no longer displays a duplicate of the collectible list for Riding the Waves.

- Various minor optimizations for the world map.

- It is now possible to bind the Backspace key and Select buttons to actions in the input settings. Unbinding is now done by holding rather than pressing.

- Removed excess delay from being able to access the pause menu after the results screen.

Kronii

- Visual effects associated with Kronii's time powers are now pooled at the start of the level to prevent the game from hitching on lower hardware when Haste is activated for the first time.

Jukebox

- In the Jukebox, there is a new audio cue if you attempt to play music with the Music volume set to 0%.

- The mouse wheel should now properly scroll through the track list.

- Selected music in the Jukebox will continue to play in the current hub area until the next scene change.

Good evening Wardens! We have a new build on the test branch that addresses a number of issues related to low frame rates along with further fixes and balance adjustments. We are putting it in a beta branch until we can verify that it won't cause unintended side effects.

If you'd like to help us test it out, right click Chrono Gear in your Steam library, select Properties, and in the Betas tab, select "testing - For new experimental builds" under Beta Participation.

If everything looks good to our players, we'll push this onto the main branch in a day or two.

Thank you again for playing Chrono Gear! <3

General:

- Fixed an issue where notes picked up by the Kronie Stack would not count toward the player's total.

- Tweaked the way auto skipping of cutscenes works in speedrun mode to be more consistent.

- The cursor should no longer snap to the top left corner when navigating menus.

- Text advancement in dialog boxes will now halt when the game is paused.

- Miscellaneous game stats will now properly reset when beginning a new game.

- It should no longer be possible to pause a cutscene again after it is skipped but before the fadeout transition ends.

Kronii:

- Kronii now has 1 second of invincibility at the start of a mission or rewind.

- It is no longer possible to mount ladders underwater.

- Fixed a rare circumstance in which Kronii's double jump and Drill Dash wouldn't refresh after landing in the dash state.

Enemies:

- Fixed an issue where certain destroyed projectiles would leave their reflection hitboxes behind.

- In Speedrun mode, certain boss fights now stop the timer when the final blow is dealt to the boss instead of at the end of the following cutscene.

The World Tree (Autumn):

- Leaf platforms now only start moving when Kronii lands on them instead of simply touching them.

- Fixed an incorrect flag being checked that could cause issues when rewinding to a checkpoint in winter.

Wrath of Nature:

- The boss now has significantly increased health on Proud.

Castle Road:

- Mumei gliders should now move more smoothly on lower framerates.

The Maze:

- Boat platforms should now move less erratically on lower framerates.

Roboco Strikes Back:

- Fixed an issue where Claw Strike's hitboxes were persisting even when RBC-4 exited the form.

Symphonic Gallery:

- Ejection from the tubular bell pipes should be much more consistent on lower framerates.

KFP Stadium:

- Made some adjustments to the boss fight so that it is merely extremely difficult when played on a custom configuration of Proud + 25% damage dealt, instead of being functionally impossible.

The Ancient Ones:

- Slightly decreased the damage dealt to the boss on first hit, and also slightly decrease the boss's max health.

- The boss now has significantly increased health on Proud.

- The boss takes significantly reduced damage during the Black Hole attack, to make damage rushing in this phase less effective.

Tower of Darkness:

- Mumei gliders should now move more smoothly on lower framerates.

- The spinning bars that Bae hits should move more smoothly on lower framerates.

- Removed several unused objects that were left outside of the level boundaries in the final area that were unnecessarily running scripts.

Steel on Steel:

- If Zero Seconds to Midnight has been cleared, completing this stage again will now return to the Sanctum hub instead of replaying the ending cutscene again.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- The number of meteors that spawn in the second shackle phase, as well as the speed at which they spawn, will now scale with difficulty.

- Damage from the meteor explosions has been slightly increased.

- On both Calm and Brave, during the first and second shackle phases, there will now be an increased delay after tail stab attack before the boss attacks again.

- Some slight adjustments have been made to the time-rewind sections of this fight to make them feel less unfair (but only slightly).

- In the shackle phases, the active hitbox of the tail stab attack will now deactivate shortly after impact.

- Additionally, the red "warning" silhouette before the first stab appears earlier. Timing for the attack itself, or the following warnings, is otherwise unchanged.

- Fixed an issue where sword projectiles could continuously spawn for several seconds in the final shackle phase.

Good evening Wardens!

After a couple weeks of polishing and refinement, we are ready to update the main branch! Performance optimizations, fixes, layout tweaks, and a dedicated speedrunning mode are all included in this new update.

The changelog below includes a compilation of all changes since the last public build (1.0.11).

Thank you for your feedback and reports!

General:

- Player movement has been enhanced with memory optimizations, which should result in a notable performance boost in larger missions.

- Minor optimization and caching for physics objects which should further boost performance.

- Script processing for warp gates, card blocks, glass blocks, bomb blocks, and snow blocks has been optimized for improved performance on missions that have them.

- More resources besides particles will now be preloaded on bootup.

- Fixed the spawn animation for certain Golden Gears that were causing them to jump from one position to another.

- Adjusted the animation speed of Golden Gears that spawn without a slowdown effect.

- The camera should no longer stutter when moving downwards.

- Various camera optimizations.

- Fixed visual inconsistencies with the button prompt labels when switching input devices.

- Additional optimizations for player physics.

- Added "Teleport Dive Cancels" as a statistic that's tracked in the Records menu.

- Revamped the way that scenes are loaded so that the next scene is far less likely to be visible for a split second during the fade transition.

- After the game has been cleared once, a new "Speedrun" toggle will appear when pressing Select in the file options menu. Speedrun mode automatically skips cutscenes and displays the overall file time onscreen.

UI:

- Dialog boxes that display during gameplay (such as Marine's dialog on Battleship Aquamarine) will now automatically resize when the game is paused so that the menu does not overlap the text.

- In the Rewind to Checkpoint menu, the options have been swapped so that pressing the Cancel input will now move to Return instead of Rewind.

- When collecting a Golden Gear in a hub mission, the black screen should no longer blink out for a frame or two before the message is displayed.

- Switched pause delay to delta time to avoid unintended side effects.

- Fixed the input labels in the controller rebind menu displaying the wrong input.

Kronii:

- Aerial properties should now always be refreshed when touching the ground for one frame.

- Kroniicopter should now function consistently at low frame rates.

- Footstep sounds and sword trails should be more consistent at low frame rates.

The World Tree:

- Adjusted the size of the hitbox for any Kronie Phone positioned over spikes, such that players no longer miss it when it would seem like they shouldn't have.

- Adjusted a small bit of terrain in the Summer section that was causing first-time players more trouble than intended.

Magic Resort:

- Fixed a stray collision box under the water.

Castle Road:

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Town Square:

- Slightly increased the number of dirt tiles that need to be cleaned in the second power washing segment in order for the thread to appear.

The Maze:

- Fixed an issue where the Friend Hint would often not choose the three nearest collectibles.

- When the player touches a Friend Hint, they will now be shown markers at the edges of the screen, in rough order from nearest to furthest. Each of these markers will be scaled to show relative distance to its target.

- Additionally, specific targets are designated as "lower priority" for certain Friend Hints, so the player will be less likely to be directed toward collectibles behind one-way gates.

- A handful of notes have been added to improve direction in specific areas.

Magitech Forge:

- Implemented object pooling for crates, dispensers and assembly line cranes to improve performance in this mission.

- Additional crate system fixes.

Ducky God Arcade:

- The background buildings are now a new sprite at the proper size instead of a smaller sprite that's upscaled.

Symphonic Gallery:

- Minor optimizations for the frozen time areas.

KFP Stadium:

- Adjusted level design in one area to make one the objective clearer.

- It should no longer be possible to skip the boss fight by exiting via the pause menu.

Case Closed:

- When the player reflects the Photon Torpedos in this fight, they will explode without being harmful to the player if the boss does not reflect them back.

Defending the Sancutm:

- Adjusted the camera in one specific area to communicate a puzzle's solution more effectively.

- Just below this area, removed one of the Clock Weights blocking the player's path to improve flow.

Solitude:

- Made some adjustments to the end of this level to improve sense of direction.

Gloom:

- Made several minor terrain changes to help this level flow just a bit more smoothly. Additionally, to improve sense of direction for some players, certain enemies have been moved from Brave to Proud only.

- Added a Slime Barrier in a specific spot to prevent casual players from putting themselves in a particularly sticky situation.

Despair:

- Fixed an issue where the music for the boss fight in this stage would not loop properly.

Tower of Darkness:

- The monitor that breaks at the end of a cutscene should now stay broken after the cutscene ends.

- Minor optimizations for the frozen time areas.

- Projectiles for the Clock Roach, Arc Sentinel, Spice Breaker, and Spiral Drake enemies have been optimized to interact with the frozen time areas more efficiently.

- Friend Hint adjustments to The Maze will now also apply to this level.

- Additionally, adjusted friend hints such that most of them will now point directly to their target treasure.

- Made a few minor adjustments to make certain parts of the level flow more smoothly.

- A few notes have been added to the Mumei room near the end of this level to assist in directing the player.

- The lock sign in the final antechamber has been updated for clarity.

- A few adjustments have been made to the Baelz section and its mechanics to help the final puzzle feel less finicky.

Steel on Steel:

- Fixed a visual issue where rewinding to the first checkpoint would not properly reset the background to its previous state.

- It should no longer be possible to drop through the bridge at the start.

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- Fixed incorrect visual layering on the right wall of one of the arenas.

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Good evening Wardens! This update for the test branch should hopefully fix the remaining regressions from version 1.0.11, along with fixing a longstanding issue with Kroniicopter at lower framerates.

General

- Fixed the input labels in the controller rebind menu displaying the wrong input.

Kronii

- Kroniicopter should no longer be interrupted by low framerate hitching.

- Footstep sounds and sword trails should be more consistent at low frame rates.

The Maze

- Optimized the way that the water level changes when certain switches are hit.

Ducky God Arcade

- The background buildings are now a new sprite at the proper size instead of a smaller sprite that's upscaled.

Good morning Wardens! This new build is once again on the beta branch while we verify that no new issues have been introduced.

In addition to fixing several issues introduced by 1.0.12, this update has additional level tweaks and optimizations.

If you'd like to help us test it out, right click Chrono Gear in your Steam library, select Properties, and in the Betas tab, select "testing - For new experimental builds" under Beta Participation.

Thank you again so much!

General:

- Fixed visual inconsistencies with the button prompt labels when switching input devices.

- Additional optimizations for player physics.

- Added "Teleport Dive Cancels" as a statistic that's tracked in the Records menu.

- Revamped the way that scenes are loaded so that the next scene is far less likely to be visible for a split second during the fade transition.

Town Square:

- Slightly increased the number of dirt tiles that need to be cleaned in the second power washing segment in order for the thread to appear.

The Maze:

- Fixed an issue where the Friend Hint would often not choose the three nearest collectibles.

- When the player touches a Friend Hint, they will now be shown markers at the edges of the screen, in rough order from nearest to furthest. Each of these markers will be scaled to show relative distance to its target.

- Additionally, specific targets are designated as "lower priority" for certain Friend Hints, so the player will be less likely to be directed toward collectibles behind one-way gates.

- A handful of notes have been added to improve direction in specific areas.

KFP Stadium:

- Adjusted level design in one area to make one the objective clearer.

- It should no longer be possible to skip the boss fight by exiting via the pause menu.

Case Closed:

- When the player reflects the Photon Torpedos in this fight, they will explode without being harmful to the player if the boss does not reflect them back.

Defending the Sancutm:

- Adjusted the camera in one specific area to communicate a puzzle's solution more effectively.

- Just below this area, removed one of the Clock Weights blocking the player's path to improve flow.

Solitude:

- Made some adjustments to the end of this level to improve sense of direction.

Gloom:

- Made several minor terrain changes to help this level flow just a bit more smoothly. Additionally, to improve sense of direction for some players, certain enemies have been moved from Brave to Proud only.

- Added a Slime Barrier in a specific spot to prevent casual players from putting themselves in a particularly sticky situation.

Despair:

- Fixed an issue where the music for the boss fight in this stage would not loop properly.

Tower of Darkness:

- Friend Hint adjustments to The Maze will now also apply to this level.

- Additionally, adjusted friend hints such that most of them will now point directly to their target treasure.

- Made a few minor adjustments to make certain parts of the level flow more smoothly.

- A few notes have been added to the Mumei room near the end of this level to assist in directing the player.

- The lock sign in the final antechamber has been updated for clarity.

Good morning Wardens! We have a big performance update ready for testing!

Because this update makes significant changes to various scripts, we are putting it in a beta branch until we can verify that it won't cause unintended side effects.

If you'd like to help us test it out, right click Chrono Gear in your Steam library, select Properties, and in the Betas tab, select "testing - For new experimental builds" under Beta Participation.

This update should result in a major performance boost on certain hardware. If everything looks good to our players, we'll push this onto the main branch in a day or two.

Thank you again for playing Chrono Gear! <3

General:

- Player movement has been enhanced with memory optimizations, which should result in a notable performance boost in larger missions.

- Minor optimization and caching for physics objects which should further boost performance.

- Script processing for warp gates, card blocks, glass blocks, bomb blocks, and snow blocks has been optimized for improved performance on missions that have them.

- More resources besides particles will now be preloaded on bootup.

- Fixed the spawn animation for certain Golden Gears that were causing them to jump from one position to another.

- Adjusted the animation speed of Golden Gears that spawn without a slowdown effect.

- The camera should no longer stutter when moving downwards.

- Various camera optimizations.

UI:

- Dialog boxes that display during gameplay (such as Marine's dialog on Battleship Aquamarine) will now automatically resize when the game is paused so that the menu does not overlap the text.

- In the Rewind to Checkpoint menu, the options have been swapped so that pressing the Cancel input will now move to Return instead of Rewind.

- When collecting a Golden Gear in a hub mission, the black screen should no longer blink out for a frame or two before the message is displayed.

- Switched pause delay to delta time to avoid unintended side effects.

Kronii:

- Aerial properties should now always be refreshed when touching the ground for one frame.

Magic Resort:

- Fixed a stray collision box under the water.

Castle Road:

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Magitech Forge:

- Implemented object pooling for crates, dispensers and assembly line cranes to improve performance in this mission.

- Additional crate system fixes.

Symphonic Gallery:

- Minor optimizations for the frozen time areas.

Tower of Darkness:

- The monitor that breaks at the end of a cutscene should now stay broken after the cutscene ends.

- Minor optimizations for the frozen time areas.

- Projectiles for the Clock Roach, Arc Sentinel, Spice Breaker, and Spiral Drake enemies have been optimized to interact with the frozen time areas more efficiently.

Steel on Steel:

- Fixed a visual issue where rewinding to the first checkpoint would not properly reset the background to its previous state.

- It should no longer be possible to drop through the bridge at the start.

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- Fixed incorrect visual layering on the right wall of one of the arenas.

- Fixed various minor collision issues.

Good evening Wardens! Today's update makes the codex easier to complete in the postgame and makes one of the final levels easier to navigate, among other fixes and tweaks.

Thank you again for your feedback and reports!

General:

- When the ending is reached, the Codex will now display the names of all missing codex entries along with a hint for where to find them.

- Fixed an issue with creating new save files in Custom difficulty.

- Fixed another line of dialog that wasn't being properly displayed in Japanese.

- Fixed various grammatical inconsistencies in the Japanese translation.

- Enemies and hazards now have increased resistance to Stasis on Proud.

- The Records menu should now display the correct number of border artworks and codex entries when calculating for 100% completion.

Enemies:

- Spice Breakers now take a slightly longer to attack when appearing on-screen or respawning.

Carnival Railway:

- Fixed some issues that were causing one of the Thread puzzles to be significantly harder than originally intended.

The World Tree:

- The warp trunk leading to the secret CD area is now visually more obvious.

- In Autumn, an area leading to invisible snow blocks is now blocked off until the player progresses to Winter.

Magic Resort:

- Fixed an issue that was causing a specific secret in both missions to be much less visible than was originally intended.

Tower of Darkness:

- A few significant changes have been made to the first part of this level to help players navigate the main pathway.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- IRyS has better aim now.

Good morning, Wardens! We have a new update ready!

Highlights include a more guaranteed chance for uncaught fish species to appear, fixed Custom difficulty, and the addition of new stats and superlatives to the Records menu and credits, which should make progress easier to track for completionists.

Thank you again for your feedback and reports!

General:

- Track #42 (Wrath of Nature) has received an updated mix from BobTheGUYYYYYY.

- Track #85 in the Jukebox has been changed from the title screen jingle to the song for the game's first trailer.

- The player will now take increased damage on Proud.

- Tweaked the timing of repeated checkpoint saves so that they will not immediately save again after Kronii lands on them from her damaged intro animation.

- Vsync has been added to the Display Settings.

- Custom difficulty settings should now save properly.

Records Menu:

- Reordered the missions in the Records menu to match their play order more closely.

- Additional statistics are tracked and displayed.

- When a new game is started from September 18, 2025 onward, it will now track various superlatives (such as the number of enemies that were defeated and the number times that time powers have been used).

Enemies:

- Reduced Spiral Drake's HP from 60 to 50.

Magic Resort:

- Slightly increased the odds of rarer fish spawning at low scores.

- Every 3 fish that spawn will now always be an uncaught species. This should make it much easier to catch every type of fish at least once.

Galaxy Gourmet:

- Compression Springs no longer require the player to hold the jump button to reach max height.

Vs. RBC-4:

- The Blade Form's laser beam attack now has a longer windup and slower movement on both Brave and Calm.

The Ancient Ones:

- This fight has been adjusted in several ways with the intent of making it more manageable for players with a defensive play style, without necessarily making it easier for more aggressive players.

- Almost all tentacles in this fight that become platforms will no longer have a start delay, forming immediately upon spawning.

- The boss's projectile attack has been adjusted such that the timing for reflecting it should now feel more intuitive.

- The player will now be granted brief invincibility during phase transitions.

Tower of Darkness:

- Adjusted terrain to prevent large enemies from entering one of the rooms.

- The final CD has been moved out of the Armored Rangoon and is now placed in the center of the first mine room.

- Two of the star portals in the final gauntlet are now one way to prevent accidental backtracking.

- The hourglass in the final antechamber is now surrounded by signage indicating where uncollected keys are, as well as the exit.

Zero Seconds to Midnight:

- Flipped a closeup in the ending cutscene horizontally to better match the characters' positions.

- The ending cutscene should now be skippable.

Good morning Wardens! We have a bigger update ready with further fixes and balancing adjustments.

In particular, we've listened to feedback regarding the checkpoints, and they will now always save your progress even if they have already been crossed. This should reduce the amount of backtracking needed in nonlinear missions after a death.

Thank you again for your feedback and reports!

General:

- Touching a checkpoint that has already been crossed will now save progress, albeit without summoning IRyS to heal.

- Checkpoints no longer immediately play their sound effect after Kronii rewinds to them.

- Smoothed the camera repositioning on the damaged version of Kronii's intro animation.

- Hope Sparks now emit green cross particles to help indicate that they provide health.

- Additional fixes and corrections for Japanese text.

Kronii:

- Wall bouncing with Drill Dash can now be buffered.

Eternity Sanctum:

- Disabled wandering NPCs for the final cutscene that takes place in the portal room.

The World Tree:

- In the Summer timeline, placed a note near the entrance to the secret room with the CD to make it easier to find.

Magic Resort:

- Further increased the chances of Pike spawning while fishing.

- Players should now have slightly more time to react to a bite.

Tidal Camp:

- Chloe's codex will now be awarded at the end of her boss battle.

Castle Road:

- Made it so if the player finds a certain secret in this level, they no longer risk missing one of the checkpoints.

- Made it so the rate at which the final bridge platform decelerates is reduced, making it easier to get it to a higher speed for players who struggle to get many hits at once.

Town Square:

- Fixed the Roboco sidequest not setting the correct story flag, making Roboco disappear from the hub permanently after leaving.

Magitech Forge:

- Slightly adjusted terrain so that the Dark Impact in this level cannot get itself wedged into a tight space, causing it to attack rapidly.

Ducky God Arcade:

- Adjusted the terrain at the exit of the third space zone so that it's easier to board the moving platform without re-entering the space zone.

Solitude:

- Terrain has been adjusted to make platforming less finicky.

- The soul flames in the end section will move slightly slower, and terrain has been adjusted such that jumps should be slightly less precise.

- Slightly adjusted one specific obstacle in the end section to make it a bit less difficult to get around if the player moves too slowly.

Entropy:

- Because checkpoints can now be used more than once, it is now possible to save progress after clearing one room in the area with two doors.

- Added Time Crystal health pickups to the final hourglass room.

- The Clock Roaches near the checkpoint in the final hourglass room will no longer respawn.

- Adjusted a tentacle in the final platforming section so that it is shorter and retracts much faster.

The Way Home:

- Updated the appearance of the boss' lower weakpoints to make them much easier to distinguish.

Tower of Darkness:

- In the final level, a button prompt has been added to the start of the level to quickly remind the player of a specific mechanic.

- For the clock puzzle at the end of the light section, the inner portal is now positioned higher so that player can walk underneath it without triggering it.

- When unfreezing an hourglass mid rotation, repositioning of Kronii should now be delayed until her new position is recalculated. This may or may not fix an issue where she teleports to the center of the hourglass when unfreezing time on 240fps.

Steel on Steel:

- In the first grind rail section, the ceiling near the start has been removed to make it easier to reach the launch pads above. The wall with the springs has also been removed so that Kronii doesn't get caught on it during the transition to the next phase.

- Suspend Game should now work properly for this mission.