Chronicon sends you and your friends into the memories of fallen heroes for a five-act action RPG about clearing rooms, collecting loot and turning skill trees into very specific plans for damage. Up to four people share one local game. Player one can use a keyboard and mouse or a controller, but every additional player needs a gamepad. Steam Remote Play Together can carry that local session to friends elsewhere; it does not add native online co-op or separate worlds for each player.
Four classes, four ways to build
Each run begins with a class choice: the armored Templar, the hard-hitting Berserker, the ranged Warden or the spell-focused Warlock. Those labels give you a starting shape, not a fixed job description. As you level, you unlock active skills and passive bonuses, then combine them with equipment, runes, sockets and set effects. The range of possible combinations is the main reason Chronicon can keep a group tinkering after the first act instead of treating a class as a single button rotation.
Skills define more than the artwork on screen. One character might lean into attacks that hit several nearby targets; another can favor a spell or projectile that reaches across a room. Gear and crafting can reinforce those choices, add effects or make a particular skill worth building around. You will see the difference in a crowded fight: a wide attack clears space, a focused hit removes a tougher enemy, and repeated effects can turn a patch of the screen into overlapping flashes. The visual language is bright and deliberately busy, especially once several characters are active together.
The four classes do not require a classic tank, healer and damage lineup. Chronicon is an action game built around each character’s skills and item choices, with everyone in one shared local adventure rather than fixed team roles. That leaves room for everyone to explore a different build, or for friends to overlap on damage types and effects. The tradeoff is that class names alone do not tell you how a late-game character will play: equipment and skill choices increasingly matter, so early impressions may not represent the build you eventually shape.
That growth also affects how long a group spends between fights. The menus and item descriptions carry a lot of detail, and comparing several drops can be its own pause in the action. This helps when you enjoy weighing bonuses and deciding whether a new piece supports a skill choice, but it can make a session feel stop-and-start if your friends want to rush from one room into the next. The game gives you plenty to inspect; it does not hide the bookkeeping behind a quick automatic upgrade.
Five acts, then more places to test a build
The campaign moves through five story acts based on the memories of fallen heroes. You and your friends fight through enemy-filled areas, complete objectives and push toward each act’s next step. The premise gives the journey a sequence of distinct chapters, while procedurally generated areas and dungeons keep individual routes from being a single, fixed corridor. As you move between fights, the action is simple to read: enemies fill the screen, attacks and skills clear them, and drops invite a quick look at whether your current setup can improve.
The loop links combat directly to character growth. Defeated enemies and completed objectives feed progression; new levels give you more ways to shape a skill tree, while loot supplies the gear that can change your damage and defenses. The inventory is not just a parade of bigger numbers. A useful drop might support a skill you already like, suggest a different direction, or become material for crafting. That steady stream makes each room a small comparison between what you have equipped and what the next item could enable.
Chronicon also gives you crafting and item systems to pursue after a basic build starts to work. Runes, sockets and set pieces make equipment combinations part of the character plan, and later dungeons and bosses provide tougher tests than the opening areas. The campaign is the clearest shared route through the game, but randomized spaces and deeper item combinations leave room to revisit combat after the story. If your group likes adjusting a build between fights, there is more to discuss than which item has the highest number; if you would rather lock in one setup and move on, the volume of drops and options can feel like extra sorting.
The skill trees make those decisions visible rather than hiding all progress in equipment. Each level can add to the active skills and passive bonuses available to a class, while a drop can change which of those choices seems worth leaning into. That creates a long ramp: the first hours establish the basic attack-and-loot loop, and later combinations give the same class more ways to clear a room. Since the party shares the adventure but each character develops its own build, comparing what has changed after a stretch of combat is part of the game’s appeal. The item chase also extends beyond finishing the five-act story, with randomized dungeons and bosses offering reasons to keep testing equipment combinations. It is a progression loop built for repeated combat, not a short campaign that switches to a new activity every chapter.
A shared screen changes the rhythm
Local co-op puts every character, enemy and effect on the same view. That makes the group feel connected to one encounter: you can see your friends’ attacks and the loot that appears, and the game does not split the party across separate maps. It also means that a busy build can cover much of the action. Chronicon uses a top-down pixel-art view, with clear character silhouettes and colorful attacks, but several effects can overlap when four heroes are firing at once. If your group wants a quiet, cinematic camera, this is a more crowded kind of adventure.
The action leans toward repeated room-clearing rather than a series of bespoke co-op puzzles. You move into enemy groups, use skills, collect what drops and continue toward objectives. The satisfaction comes from faster, more expressive builds and the next upgrade, not from solving a different environmental mechanism in every area. The early stretch can feel slow before a build has enough tools to stand out, and longer runs between waypoints may test a group’s patience. Later skill and item interactions give the same combat loop more possibilities, but whether that depth outweighs repeated rooms depends on how much your friends enjoy refining characters between fights.
The practical limits before you invite everyone
Chronicon is local co-op for up to four players on one host machine. Player one can use keyboard and mouse or a controller. Each additional player needs a controller, including anyone joining remotely through Steam Remote Play Together. Remote guests send controller input into the host’s local session; friends are not connecting to native online or LAN worlds. The host’s game and screen remain the shared session, so remote play is best understood as a streaming route into couch co-op.
That distinction matters when you compare it with games that give every friend a separate camera, save or online character slot. Here, the host launches and runs the game, and the rest join that one local party. Steam Remote Play Together is convenient when friends cannot share a room, but it still depends on the host’s connection and the local controller setup. It does not remove the extra-player gamepad requirement. For three guests, that means three controllers beyond whatever player one chooses to use.
Chronicon supports Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer on Linux; other Linux distributions are not officially supported. This matters if the host uses Linux, because the added players join that machine rather than running their own copies. The extra players are joining the host’s game, so it is the host’s install and machine that determine whether the session runs.
Who will enjoy sharing this loot loop?
Chronicon fits a group that likes action RPGs where enemies arrive in waves, loot comes often and character plans become more involved over time. Its four-player local cap is generous for one-screen play, and Remote Play Together gives the same party a way to include friends from elsewhere without pretending the game has a separate online mode. The class choice gives everyone a distinct start, while equipment and skill trees provide room to make those characters less predictable as the campaign progresses.
The same focus can be a mismatch if your friends want a co-op story built around carefully staged set pieces, a low-clutter screen or native online sessions with little host-side setup. The five acts provide a campaign path, but the moment-to-moment structure repeatedly returns to combat, drops and build decisions. The inventory and item systems offer plenty of texture for groups who enjoy comparing options; they add pauses for sorting if your group wants every room to flow straight into the next.
If that rhythm sounds right, the practical checklist is short: up to four on one local session, keyboard and mouse or a controller for player one, and a separate controller for every added player. Remote Play Together can bring remote friends into the host’s game, but it remains the same shared-screen local co-op underneath. That combination makes Chronicon a clear fit for a group that wants to build characters together and has the controllers to match.