So what is The Chrono Jotter?
The short answer is a Chinese lesbian visual novel. The longer answer is that it's a game that was released in 2021 to, as far as I can find, little fanfare in English language circles. This is in part because the original English translation was all machine translated and apparently quite dogshit- however, this past March a new English translation was patched into the game1 making for a much better experience! So, that out of the way, what is this actually about?
The game is focused on the perspective of Ran Ibuki, who has spent the last four years investigating supernatural phenomena in an attempt to locate her missing girlfriend, Ann Sakura. This has led her to the opening of the game where she's stumbled upon a strange and isolated school populated by seven other girls who have taken to engaging in regular murder games to pass the time- when in Rome and all. This is enabled by a weird fact of the place where, so long as certain conditions are met, any death can be undone as though it never happened. The game itself plays around the spectacle of the murders, but really it's main focus is as a character study of the girls involved and Ran Ibuki, the normalest girl alive.
Tell me a bit about the game itself
The Chrono Jotter is structurally pretty straightforward- you only need one playthrough to get everything aside from the ending choice, and there's a simple system of attributes that determines whether you can pass or fail periodic skill checks. If you miss a branch, don't worry- periodically, Ran will use a power called "Recall" that allows her to explore choices she didn't make, and to see special alternative possibilities so she can solve the murders happening around her. Overall, it's a very linear experience that's only really held back by a somewhat finicky interface2. The investigations consist of going through all the options available to you as you eliminate choices automatically. This is one to approach more like a novel than a game or simulator.
Why are you doing this whole writeup, anyways?
Well, put simply, I had a lot more fun with it than I was expecting! When I describe it as a lesbian VN, this isn't a nod and a wink- Ran is desperately in love with her girlfriend, and the other seven girls we meet are all some variety of explicitly into women. It's refreshing! They're also all freaks about it. This works pretty well in the game's favor, because despite the murder game backdrop, it's really more about doing character studies into them all, their relationships, and the throughline that brings a bunch of girls displaced from time into this one weird school to recreationally murder each other, so we get to dig into a lot of their internality. It's a game that's ultimately very empathetic towards its characters, and as it pulls back the curtain the emotional and narrative beats behind the true nature of the space they're in land very well.
Speaking of internality, it's also surprisingly decent at handling Ran's schizophrenia and how it fits into her relationship with Ann and the supernatural, and how she's so obsessed with finding Ann. It's taken seriously and not played for laughs or thrills, it's just another challenge she's had to grapple with in her life of increasingly mounting challenges, and part of her obsession comes down to Ann being an instrumental figure in helping her to manage her mental health.
Also worth noting that the game does a pretty good job at building up some of the insane SCP shit happening in the background that Ran keeps having to engage with, as well as her weird relationship with her notebook that gives her access to the "Recall" power in exchange for her blood, that she sometimes eats the pages of. There's a lot to unpack there and the game does unpack it, trust me.
Is this for me?
I'd recommend checking it out if you like to see lesbians who are some mix of cringefail, freaks, and so so so normal in a neat supernatural setting who kill each other sometimes. I streamed it with some friends over the course of about 9-10 hours and had a lot of fun with it! If you're still not sure, I found this to be a pretty solid review of the game and what it's doing as well, though heads up for more spoilers on the central twists of the game.
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I happen to be friends with some of the primary people behind the translation project; shoutout to Zero, Nightpool, and Diane!
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specific issues I ran into: weird hitboxes on dialogue buttons; menu navigation being a bit finicky; the notebook not always updated in the correct format- at one point, a bit of information was incorrectly revealed for a character writeup