Sonic Adventure 2's Chao system, inside Core Keeper. Every Chao, egg, animation, garden theme and Chao voice is read from your own Sonic Adventure 2 while you play. Nothing from SA2 is included in the download.
What you get
- Chao eggs in the walls. Break dirt and stone walls and sometimes a real SA2 Chao egg pops out. A world with no Chao is guaranteed one early.
- Your Chao Garden. Hold B to plant it in your base. Eggs hatch there, and Chao wander and play inside it to SA2's Neutral, Hero or Dark garden theme (which one depends on your Chao).
- Raise them the SA2 way. Feed them Core Keeper's own food: fish, Heart Berries, Carrocks, Sunrice, Lunacorn and more. Each food raises different stats: Swim, Fly, Run, Power and Stamina. Pet them with G to make them happy.
- Hero or Dark. Petting, farming and Sunrice push a Chao Hero. Fighting and Lunacorn push it Dark.
- The full life cycle. Children lean toward their best stat, then evolve twice into any of SA2's 100+ adult forms (all of them drawn from SA2's real 3D models as Core Keeper pixel art). At the end of their life comes the cocoon: happy Chao are reborn, and twice-reborn Chao that are fully Hero or Dark can become Chaos Chao.
- Ageing on your terms. Chao only age while they're outside the garden. You can change the speed (or stop it) with
agingScale in the mod's settings.
- Cave buddies. Press V to take up to two Chao along. Their stats help you: Power boosts mining, Run speeds you up, Swim helps fishing, Fly lights the way and Stamina adds health.
- Co-op. Friends join your world with its Game ID, and everyone shares the world's Chao and garden. Each world keeps its own Chao.
Controls
G pet / feed held food / pick up or put down eggs · V take along or send home · N stat card · hold B plant or move the garden. Keys and sizes (chaoScale) are changeable in Core Keeper/.../mods/ChaoKeeper/config.txt.
Needs
Core Keeper (1.x) and Sonic Adventure 2 (Steam), both installed.
Credits
Chao, eggs, motions, music and voices: Sonic Adventure 2 © SEGA, read from your own copy. Core Keeper © Pugstorm / Fireshine Games. The mod was made with AI assistance (Claude) using Core Keeper's official mod loader. The SA2 file readers were written for this mod, with format notes from the X-Hax SA Tools community.