Metroidvanias. If I am being transparent, I am absolutely butt at them. You give me a platformer and I’m usually plus/minus good to go. Souls-like, precision-style gaming? I can’t promise stellar gameplay, but I’ll get through it. Merge the two of those styles together and you get me playing as a hot mess. You also get a new demo that I had a chance to try out: Chronoscript: The Endless End.

Chronoscript: The Endless End is an upcoming Metroidvania from the minds over at DeskWorks Inc. and Shueisha Games (Schrodinger’s Call, Opus: Prism Peak). While there’s no definitive date yet (to my knowledge, at least), Chronoscipt is slated for a 2026 release to both PC and PlayStation 5.

We here at Gamer Social Club were able to get a sneak peek at the upcoming demo that will be available for this title. While ever a struggle-busser at Metroidvania’s, I offered myself up to give the demo a whirl. So, without further ado, let’s get lost in the pages of Chronoscript.

The World & The Story

The world of Chronoscript is unique, in that it technically takes place in two settings. The first, and primary one, is within the year 2026. We, an unnamed Editor, have received a call from a new Author who seeks our services with their works.

This secluded Author, residing deep in the mountains, is where we pick up the story, where our Editor is bitten by a mosquito. We awake, to find ourselves trapped in The Endless End. A manuscript penned by the Author…who happens to be a Vampire Mistress who resides in these mountains.

Thus, we arrive at the second setting of Chronoscript, the Endless End. This vast, labyrinthine manuscript, is where our Editor will journey to try and free himself from the pages of the Author’s own work.

The manuscripts themselves are loaded with all manner of enemies (many of whom are bug-adjacent, which makes sense for decaying organic matter like paper). None of them also appear to be sentient, in any way, outside of wanting to end the life of our Editor. He’ll need to use every trick in his book to survive and escape!

The Gameplay

If you’re familiar with Metroidvanias, then you’re well familiar with what the gameplay of Chronoscript is like. To the newly acquainted, you’ll start the game with very limited abilities. You can jump, attack, and heal. That’s it. And your healing is limited at only two “charges”.

As you progress, you’ll slowly gain more abilities, when it comes to both attacks and movements. Within the demo of Chronoscript, we are limited to only a few movement buffs. Specifically, a double-jump (a Page Skip) for increased height in our jumps, and a wall-climb ability that can be utilized on areas where there is ink (again, very book-themed).

Scattered throughout the manuscripts you can find couches to sit on. You’ll heal up here, but at the cost of all enemies returning to the map that you previously defeated.

The demo itself ends with a face-off with what will presumably be the game’s first “boss”: the Obsessive Bookworm. Like many bosses in both Metroidvanias and Souls-like games, the boss has two phases, with the latter half changing it up to a little more difficulty.

While I did manage to overcome our squirmy friend, I would be lying if I didn’t say it took me quite a few attempts to defeat them. We’ll get into that in a bit!

And that was the whole demo. Brief, but enough to give you a taste of what Chronoscript will be offering up down the road. Now, let’s dive into what I like and didn’t like in this first impression with this title’s demo.

The Good

Gorgeous Artistic Choices

Let’s just get this out of the way. Chronoscript is pretty as can be! I love the design choices to make it look like you have been plopped right into an ancient manuscript.

The exterior world, that the Author, while not as…gripping, is not essential to the gameplay that we’re experiencing at the end of the day. The gameplay is really focused within the manuscript, while the story takes place in the bounds of reality.

Intuitive Combat Mechanics

Once I got the game running (I’ll get into that), the actual movement and combat mechanics were very intuitive and didn’t feel as though they were designed by someone who had never touched a Metroidvania beforehand.

I will be very curious to see how future combat mechanics are included into the gameplay, as we aren’t really given much of a sense of what they might be down the road.

The Bad

An Absolute HOG on PC Resources

I do, sadly, need to address this. The demo itself doesn’t feel like it’s been perfectly optimized yet. My first two launches of the demo were met with crashes on my PC. And while I’m not running a 5090 on my PC, it’s also not a Lenovo ThinkPad where I played Chronoscript. When diving into the Task Manager, Chronoscript was eating up 50% of my PC’s memory.

For a 2D Metroidvania, this does feel somewhat excessive.

Precision to an Extreme

One of the facets of Chronoscript that I felt somewhat frustrated with were the actual levels of precision needed…especially on a first boss of a game. I mentioned earlier that I struggled. Boy howdy, I struggled. It took easily…a dozen attempts, if not more, to get past the Obsessive Bookworm.

Am I pro at Metroidvanias? Far from it. But that being said this, this definitely feels like a game where you had best be familiar with the kind of combat that will be needed from Page 1 (pun intended).

The Editor also feels incredibly weak at the onset. I mean to the point where strikes on the boss seem to only remove a sliver of health. Couple this with slow attack speeds and short windows to attack and you’re looking at a very repetitive fight where one misstep can spell the end of the fight itself.

Again, maybe it’s me, but it feels that the difficulty is somewhat high for an early stage boss. This makes me question how difficult future encounters might be in this title.

The Overall

If you have never dipped a toe into the universe of Metroidvanias, then Chronoscript: The Endless End may not be the place to start. While the journey to your first boss is easy, the fight itself with our wormy friend will definitely kick the difficulty up a notch. But that being said, though, this might itch the scritch of fans of Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight and Silksong. My sincere hope, however, is that some work goes into the optimization of this title for a smoother experience for all.

Chronoscript: The Endless End is slated for a PC release to both PC and PlayStation 5.

Gamer Social Club was provided an early access copy of this demo for the purposes of this first impression review. This review was played on PC (Steam).