Can Chrono Odyssey THRIVE with Kakao as a Publisher?
23Last year I did a video on a game called Chrono Odyssey, an MMORPG with a premise of exploring time with action based time manipulation combat. The game had originally been announced in 2020 with some sort of release or testing window for 2022. Many followers thought the game had died off in development, but then in May of 2023 we got an update and it's been silent since. We’ve since gotten a small update about Chrono Odyssey and that it is still under development now under Chrono Studio (a subsidiary of Npixel), will launch with a box price, is listed on Steam and Epic Game Store, and will be published by Kakao.
While not a lot of details are available for the game, we do know the plan is to have extensive character customization. There will be six combat classes, with a choice of 18 weapons so players can build what they want. There will also be meaningful harvesting and crafting, raids and dungeons, although they did mention a possible ability to solo dungeons, so we will have to see how that works. The game itself is set in a seamless open world that is 12 km² in size, which compared to other games building in Unreal Engine 5 is very small. By contrast Ashes of Creation is planning on having a 1200 km² size world. However, if you watch the tech demo presentation they talk about layering so the world so you explore it in different times. If you are able to move between times and each one of these times is unique, then that 12 km² suddenly becomes much bigger.
They have not yet stated if there will be PVP and PVE servers, in fact they haven’t really detailed much about the PVP (if any) yet at all. They also didn’t give any updates on the original “mobile” cross-play so that may either be gone, or just a dirty little secret. On the topic of dirty, now for the bad news.
Chrono Odyssey is going to be published by Kakao Games, the original publishers of Black Desert Online and the current publishers of Archeage and the owners of XL Games who is developing Archeage 2. Kakao has a long history of aggressive monetization and unfair treatment to players, specifically when they acquired the rights/servers of Archeage Legacy and Archeage Unchained and they basically stole/cheated/swindled the player base out of their credits. For some people, Kakao being involved in the project means they won’t touch it. For now, all we know is that Chrono Odyssey is going to be a buy to play game.
So, what do you think? Does this one have you interested? Or is it a pass since Kakao is involved? Let me know in the comments.
State of Unreal - Tech Demo
https://youtu.be/1w3nIKrWo6Y
Chrono Odyssey Trailer/Teaser
https://youtu.be/uA3dDC4d7bg
Massively OP Article by Chris Neal
https://massivelyop.com/2024/03/21/chrono-odyssey-debuts-a-splashy-new-in-engine-trailer-and-confirms-kakao-games-as-publisher/#:~:text=It%27s%20been%20a%20long%20time,about%20its%20mechanics%20and%20cross-
Chrono Odyssey Webpage
https://chronoodyssey.com/#/
Steam Page
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2873440/Chrono_Odyssey/
Epic Games Store Page
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/chrono-odyssey-366af5