Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Review Overview
What is Chrono Gear: Warden of Time?
You are Ouro Kronii, the Warden of Time. Your ambition to become the strongest in the universe gave rise to the Chrono Gear, an artifact meant to preserve timelines, but where power exists, darkness is always drawn to claim it.
A fierce battle with the demonic Alter Laplus has shattered the Chrono Gear and scattered its Golden Gears across the stars. Now you must gather the fragments, face the forces that broke your universe, and restore balance to the space-time continuum.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time features:
⚫︎ Haste and Stasis abilities to accelerate or slow down time
⚫︎ Collectibles
⚫︎ Cameo appearances by various Hololive vtubers
⚫︎ A central hub
⚫︎ Unlockable music tracks and background artwork
⚫︎ Action platformer gameplay
 Steam |
$17.99 |
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Great Boss Fights Main Gimmick is Insanely Versatile Hololive Cameos! Fishing Minigame. Enough Said |
Too Easy Hard to Get Into if You Don’t Watch Hololive |
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Story - 8/10
There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the overarching story. It mostly feels like a forced setup to justify conflict between characters who’d normally get along outside of their Among Us collabs. But that simplicity actually works in its favor, playing into the group’s laid-back dynamic and letting each character’s personality, and the established humor that comes with it, shine through.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Gameplay - 9/10
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time has all the essentials of an action platformer—basic attacks, sprinting, and close-quarters combat—while only having a time manipulation gimmick that lets you speed up or slow down battles instead of having skills to style on enemies. It’s a clever mechanic that creates an incredibly fun and even a little addicting game. The controls have some questionable keybinds, though, and the difficulty could use a significant boost.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Visuals - 9/10
What really stands out here is how much passion for the fandom (especially for Kronii herself) shines through the pixel art; every sprite feels faithful to its roots while still fitting naturally into an action platformer. The animations are just as polished, with smooth performance and precise hit/hurtboxes that keep combat visually intuitive and responsive. Add in animated pixel and handmade cutscenes plus the excellent fanart borders, and you get an almost perfect experience—if only those borders could be disabled for a full view of the game.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Audio - 6/10
Unlike its striking visuals, Chrono Gear: Warden of Time’s audio is far less memorable. Outside of a few voice-acted quips and remixes of familiar tunes, most of it feels pretty standard, with flat sound effects standing out the most—even on a solid audio setup.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Value for Money - 9/10
Much of Chrono Gear: Warden of Time’s charm comes from its laser-focused writing aimed squarely at Hololive fans. How much you enjoy it really depends on how familiar you are with that world. If you are, the $17.99 price tag feels like a steal given the sheer amount of references, challenges, content, and clever writing packed in. If not, you’ll likely struggle to find much here worth your time.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Overall Score - 82/100
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time is clearly a passion project by a Hololive fan, especially one devoted to Council’s Warden of Time, Ouro Kronii. That passion pays off quite a bit, as the game feels like a tour through the characters’ lore, enriched by their distinct and colorful personalities. If you’re into the franchise, this is one you definitely shouldn’t miss.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Review: Timesink Perfected
My Favorite Holo EN Vtuber in Her Own Game
Before stumbling onto Chrono Gear: Warden of Time, I was knee-deep in KayAnimate’s Kaelaverse: Pemascape. But after I realized that I might just be fueling the dev’s distractions from working on the next HoloCure update, I reluctantly put it aside to see what else holo Indie had to offer.
Sure, I could’ve sunk even more hours into my already bloated HoloCure playtime, but until Shishiro Botan shows up, I’ll keep holding my breath.
That’s when Chrono Gear: Warden of Time caught my attention. As a longtime Ouro Kronii fan (been following her since debut, at least until Kaela convinced me sleep was for the weak), the game had me hooked instantly. Add the fact that I love action platformers, am perpetually broke, and the price was just $18 before discount, and it pretty much checked all my boxes. Plus, with nobody to team up with on Holo X Break, this felt like the next best thing.
The Realm of Time, in Bae
The story kicks off with Kronii scheming to create the Chrono Gear (gasp, it's the title), a device meant to amplify her dominion over time as its Warden. But before she can bask in her brilliance and gloat about it in a fictional stream, a surprise visit from Mumei and a bizarre dream later, Kronii wakes up to find her powers severely weakened, and the golden gears that symbolize her authority have been scattered across the realms of Time, Space, Nature, Civilization, and Chaos.
Of course, being the self-conscious perfectionist she is, Kronii sets out to recover the gears, traveling through each realm and crossing paths with fellow Wardens and other familiar faces. True to form, she helps them with their own troubles, although it’s probably to give herself more reasons to gloat. But as she pieces things together, a larger plot emerges, with HoloX seemingly behind her stolen powers and the chaos across the realms.
Given that premise, the story is tough to get into unless you’re already part of the fandom. It leans heavily on inside jokes and references, making it a poor entry point for newcomers. In short, if you don’t follow vtubers, especially from Hololive, you’ll likely struggle to enjoy it.
Fights, Clocks, and Fishing Rods
Strange story aside, Chrono Gear: Warden of Time plays like a straightforward action platformer. Combat is built around basics—ground and aerial attacks, dashing, air stomps, and even the "Kroniicopter" (because apparently if a clock spins fast enough, it becomes an aircraft), which is essentially Kronii's way of floating while also being an aerial attack.
Where it stands out is in Kronii’s signature gimmick: time control. Instead of flashy screen-clearing supers or anime arms sprouting from her back, she uses Haste and Stasis. Haste boosts her speed, essentially pressing the fast forward button to everything from moving to attacking, and even allowing short-distance teleportation. Meanwhile, Stasis slows everything nearby—enemies, projectiles, even environmental hazards—and even protects her from damage once. The catch is that both draw from their own energy bars, which need time to recharge once drained and can only be used when full.
And the cherry on top? Outside combat, you can interact with other Hololive members and go fishing. Yes, fishing. Game of the Year contender, right there.
Endearlingly Non-Canon Story
As you might expect, the story doesn’t really make sense—even if you watch VTubers six hours a day like I do. It’s a plot stitched together from the characters’ backstories, mostly as an excuse to spark conflict where there normally wouldn’t be any. Otherwise, the biggest drama you’d see from them would be pointing fingers in Among Us or Kronii earning flabbergasted gasps by calling Cecilia a clanker.
That said, it’s not inappropriate either. Some of the best fanworks in the community, like KayAnimate’s HoloCure or Mazumaro’s Myth’s Bad Ending, thrive on "what if" scenarios that take the characters’ designs and lore to their logical extremes. In a sense, these stories are fanfics that answer niche questions people never ask but are always curious about.
What does feel odd, though, is how some characters are handled. Take Ninomae Ina’nis (Ina) for example: her power level has always been left vague, but here she’s strong enough to throw up a barrier around Airani Iofifteen’s spaceship—yet she doesn’t so much as flinch when Marine’s anchors break through it. To be fair, maybe that’s just her soft-spoken personality winning out in the middle of the incident.
I Want to Throw Hands With Lui Again
Boss fights in games like these are usually pretty sterile, leaning more on thematic flair than on interesting mechanics. You’ll often get melee-only bosses that prance around like they’re putting on a show rather than fighting, for example, or ones that keep their distance and pepper you with gunfire like they’d rather not breathe the same air as you.
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time mostly follows that mold. The first midboss, for instance, can be beaten by simply running up behind it (because there’s no contact damage to worry about) and mashing the basic attack. Even the first major boss, Hakui Koyori, plays like a stock action-platformer fight, with only a light sprinkling of bullet hell patterns to mix things up.
That’s why the battle against Takane Lui (who happens to be one of my favorite Hololive JP VTubers—I’ve seen all her horror streams) stood out so much. It completely upends expectations by layering mechanics you wouldn’t think the game was even capable of. You still get the core action-platforming combat, but now you’re also navigating a horizontal shoot-’em-up phase that you reach through a clever mix of platforming and puzzle-solving. On top of that, it’s a 1v2 showdown against Lui and her pet Ganmo, with Lui herself remaining untouchable for most of the fight. The result is an intense, fast-paced clash that feels leagues above the encounters before it—and it only gets better from there.
It’s probably one of the most enjoyable boss fights I’ve had in an action platformer, really. It’s not perfect, though, because…
The Game is too Easy
I don’t consider myself a very good player by any stretch of the imagination. Decent, sure, maybe. But the fact that I never once died to enemies until the fourth realm (though I did fall into hazards plenty) makes it hard to deny that this game is on the easy side. And really, it boils down to two things: the lack of contact damage and how spammable Haste is if you’ve got decent execution. Much like in Ender Magnolia, not having contact damage means you can abuse the fact that most enemies’ hitboxes don’t cover their whole bodies. In practice, that means you can just hug them in their "personal space" and invalidate a lot of their attacks—even some bosses, even while they’re mid-swing with moves you’d think would hurt the instant a pixel touches you.
This is only made worse by how busted Haste is as an offensive tool. The two combined basically let you run up to anything that moves, flip Haste on (or do it before to make it easier), and turn it into grated cheese before it even knows what happened. I'm not saying that contact damage is a must, but it’d be nice ifm for example, enemies were more aggressive so that running into them has more danger. The use of Stasis becomes more than just a suggestion if that happens too, and would at least crank the challenge up a notch.
There are other quirks too, like the dash being tied to the horizontal drill. I’ve whiffed more platforming sections than I care to admit because the game decided I wanted to drill just for pressing the button a frame before Kronii touched the ground. And while we’re at it, I really wish the borders could be turned off so the whole screen could shine. But nitpicks aside, Chrono Gear: Warden of Time is still an incredibly fun ride, packed with surprises, clever touches, and moments that made me genuinely smile.
Is Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Worth It?
If You Enjoy Hololive, Then Buy It
This is a tough game to recommend if you’re not already part of the fandom, as it leans heavily on inside references and jokes. The gameplay is solid, but so much of its pull comes from the story that enjoyment is tied to knowing the source material.
For Hololive fans, though, the choice is obvious—buy it now.
| Steam |
$17.99 |
Chrono Gear: Warden of Time FAQ
How many Hololive characters make an appearance?
A lot. They include Ina, Flare, Zeta, IRyS, and even graduated members like Mumei, Sana, and Fauna. There’s almost three dozen, at least according to the Codex.
Game8 Reviews
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Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Product Information
 |
|
| Title | CHRONO GEAR: WARDEN OF TIME |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 12, 2025 |
| Developer | Team Chrono Gear |
| Publisher | holo Indie |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Action, Platformer |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Chrono Gear: Warden of Time Website |
