Suggested by a mod, and frankly, I think it has enough merit. The one stop for all your Chao gardening needs! With Frontiers looming on the horizon, it's been revealed that one of the biggest players in the creation of the Chao is now the producer of this new title. Of course, there's much ado about the possibility of the classic sub game returning in Frontiers, and discourse has been running wild about hopes and wishes for a potential return- including it's likelihood. What do all of you think? Personally I don't think Frontiers will contain Chao, nor do I think any Sonic game is dependent upon it for success (like some, you know who you are ), however, I definitely would love to see it come back. Iirc, the last time we got direct Chao interaction in any game was Sonic Chronicles, of all titles. So what are your thoughts? Let's get the Chao train rolling once more!
Even when I was young I though Chao were a grindy mess. The only time I ever actually enjoyed Chao raising was a brief period of time from like 2002 to 2005, when SA2 was still new, I was 10 and had nothing better to do/afford, and 3D gaming was still in its infancy. I think they could be brought back in a useful way though. If they could be treated more like monster hunter Palicos and could actually assist you in game play, I think that'd be great especially in an open world game. The traditional Chao model though would make a great mobile game and Sega's been dumb not capitalizing on it. It could be so easily monetized too. It could even be tied to like Sonic Dash, animals from runs could be given to them, you could then race Chao online after, something like that?
While I doubt it will have Chao gardens, I hope it has Chao in some capacity. Whether as peaceful critters, Not-Koroks, a hidden village, "equippable" sidekicks, or anything else, I want them somewhere. They clearly know Chao are popular. They wouldn't have make Chao In Space a real thing if they didn't. Spoiler: EDIT Neutral>Dark>Hero, Run>All Else
I want to believe the Chao Garden would make for an engaging and popular mobile game, but I'm uncertain how it would truly fare as a standalone experience. I can envision a dreadful scenario wherein you collect your chao drives from randomized loot boxes or a loot roulette wheel. Plenty of people would likely be totally fine with that even, but I wouldn't be among them. Raising the chao and offering it the drives you desire is only about half of the core experience for me, with actively seeking them out as Sonic and co. making up the other half. Exchanging that for RNG would be a bummer. Mobile games do love having access to your wallet though, so you'd likely be able to buy all the drives you'd want if you were so inclined. So long as the Chao raising was as it was in SA2 and featured the usual minigames, I'm positive it would find an audience. I'm not getting my hopes up regarding Chao Gardens featuring in Sonic Frontiers, but I would be stoked if it were. As an alternative to the loot box approach, a potential mobile app could connect to your save in Frontiers or any future title and enable you to collect drives to transfer over to the app. This would be the best way to bring back Chao in my opinion, with the Garden itself being in the app instead of the main game. I wouldn't bet on this ever happening, but a bit of dreaming can't hurt.
Feel the urge to throw this in: https://chao-island.com/ I had a neat idea for how they could be done. I'm going whole hog with the "Breath of the Wild ripoff" angle here: Chao themselves would be an equippable "item" of sorts like in Sonic Chronicles. Chaos Drives could be enemy drops, but in a more raw, unrefined form than the clearly manufactured ones that GUN powers their robots with. Feeding the items affect the form just like in the gardens, and the equipped Chao's form would give Sonic some kind of statistical boost. Off the top of my head, Swim lets Sonic hold his breath longer, Fly grants a higher jump or more airtime, Run increases max speed, Power could increase attack damage or breaks breakable objects faster, Normal...less knockback or more recovery time from attacks? The time spent with Sonic (as in "equipped" to Sonic) would be the mechanism for maturation, and the more mature they are, the more potent their effects. They'd also float behind you like Cheese, and your Chao don't die. The more I flesh it out, the more bummed I am that they probably won't do anything.
I'm just going to quote my post from the Frontiers thread as a jump-off point since I'm probably going to keep coming back to what I said here. I have talked in other threads before about my idea of a Chao Game that could happen which I'm kinda hinting at in the above post. Basically, it'd be set in that far-away forest that you trash abandon send Chao to and you'd play as Chaos who's watching over them. As stated above, I think it's incredibly vital to have a larger game for a Chao garden to supplement as it was inherently designed that way, and treasure hunting is the most organic fit out of the 3 major gameplay styles of Adventure. You'd basically explore these large treasure hunting stages searching for small animals, chaos drives, and potentially other items that help you progress the story and give you some lore on the Echidnas, emeralds, and maybe Chaos himself. You'd also need to level up Chao in order to progress in the hunting stages, giving further incentive to raising them. That gives you a vital gameplay cycle which is missing if you have the garden all by its lonesome. Frontiers' open-world style of game lends itself equally as well to that idea, but I would suggest it'd be a side task with some potential bonuses if you equip say a high-level speed Chao. They could be like gear in BotW in that sense. There's an incentive to invest in Chao but no obligation for those who don't care for them. You can kinda do it with the Chao Gameplay mods for SA1 & SA2, but they don't really add anything to the characters. In fact, I believe there's been tinkering done with the mods to try and get them to boost stats of chao as they play through the level.
I doubt the Chao Garden will ever return. Wasn't Chao Yuji Naka's brain child? Nights and Balan Wonderland both had similar creatures. Anyway, my favorite version of the Chao Garden is SA2. Particularly, I liked getting the Chao key and making quick stops between the levels. Definitely too grindy though, but this can be made easier with mods on PC. I think more control of the races/karate would have also been an improvement.
I've always thought a Chao Garden mobile companion-app that works in tandem with the main game would be a good idea. If there were Chao Gardens in Frontiers I imagine that you could get like a QR code in-game and then you open up the app on your phone and the Chao transfer over (would also work thematically since Frontiers is apparently meant to be about cyberspace). Feels like a modernized version of sending them to the Tiny-Chao Garden in the Adventure games.
If we ever were to get the Chao Garden to return again in any form, I'd love to see them add a 3rd minigame to go alongside racing, my suggestion would be something like the Contests in Pokemon games, I think it'd work great and add a whole new layer to chao raising.
I'm kind of back and forth with Chao. On one hand, they offered a nice incentive to go back and replay levels and gave a break from the action stages. On the other hand, they're a pretty stark contrast to the main game and I'm not sure if a lot of people would play it much to justify the additional devtime and resources that could probably be better used elsewhere. I personally enjoyed the Chao stuff in SA2B but never really felt like going back on replays. Perhaps making them into a mobile game as others have suggested before would be an interesting idea, more so if you could connect with mainline Sonic titles for bonuses. I wonder how a standalone Chao game would do? Maybe something along the lines of Pokemon with an emphasis on trading/raising, but instead of trading Chao you could trade for items (like animals, hats, etc) and use them in online competitions. Could bring back the Avatar from Forces too for the player to customize as well (would serve the purpose of being a "trainer" in this game). This is just one idea off the top of my head, but I'd imagine it would probably cause a bit of a stir online if a full Chao-focused game with competitive and social aspects were revealed. There is honestly a lot of routes that could be taken with Chao, but I think tacking them as a side mode to Sonic games might not really be worth the effort as I'm not really sure adding Chao to Sonic would push more copies in the long run. But I do know the interest for Chao is there to some degree and they should certainly be exploring options to bring them back.
Frontiers already feels like Sonic Team face some risk of biting more off than they can chew. Making Chao a fun enough experience for a modern game is just going to eat up development resources that could be better spent on the main game. I think if Sonic games are going to be consistently good again, they need to stop trying to do so many things and just focus on doing a few things well. I agree with the app suggestion that others have made. Sega should just outsource Chao to a mobile developer and make an app-based pet game. It feels like Chao would work much better on that sort of platform. They could probably have some of syncing feature between the mobile app and main games, to share content between them and unlock stuff. I bet if they worked Chao into a future Sonic movie, then a Chao pet app would be a runaway success.
I honestly don't know why Sega hasn't done this already. A creature raising game? If that's not a microtransaction goldmine I don't know what is.
While I would love Chao in Sonic Frontiers, it's Sonic Team / Sega who are making the game, so I doubt we see Chao in-game. And that's sad, because an open world Sonic experience is ideal for re-introducing Chao concept, and built on the things that worked in the past. A companion app is a no brainer here, if only to test the waters for a future standalone app. For me Chao were always a nice "diversion" from the main game, an enjoyable side activity.
I wouldn't have nearly as good a time raising Chao if it were in some disconnected mobile game. Especially with the shitty-ass microtransactions that it would no doubt come with. No thanks.
It depends on the concept of the game. I've never spend a dime on microtransactions, and I've enjoyed Pokémon GO and some other mobile titles in the past. Sonic Force's Speed Battle was fun IIRC, so I'd give Sega a chance with ChaoApp.
One of the few times I ever cried over a piece of media was when I was like 9 years old and found out Chao could die. Anyway! The fact that Sega hasn't revisited the Chao idea kinda baffles me since it seems really popular among fans and they're not above fan pandering. Were Chao not popular in Japan or something? I could maybe see it, since Japan probably had more tamagotchi knock-offs to contend with.
I doubt it, Japan seems receptive to those sorts of knock-offs. Every single Pokemon generation has a Pikachu knockoff, and while westerners are tired of them, Japan seems to love them.
