That Bloober Team is so hot right now!
Fresh off their much lauded work on 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake, the Polish video games developer is already prepping any number of new projects. Among them, Cronos: The New Dawn, set for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, sometime in 2025.
Powered by Unreal Engine 5, this twisted time travel story (unfolding in third-person survival horror format), is set in a dystopian, apocalyptic future where humanity’s survival hinges on unraveling the mysteries of a strange, otherworldly phenomenon known as “The Change.”
Sporting the tagline “Survive the nightmare of the future to save what remains of the past” the game is described as follows:
In a grim world where Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology, you play as a Traveler tasked with scouring the wastelands of the future in search of time rifts that will transport you back to 1980s-era Poland.
In the past, you will witness a world in the throes of The Change, a cataclysmic event that forever altered humanity. The future meanwhile, is a ravaged wasteland overrun by nightmarish abominations.
Players assume the role of a scientist-explorer working for the enigmatic Collective, who task the player with navigating a desolate world, uncovering ancient secrets, and facing psychological challenges that test their perception of reality.
Your mission is to locate key people from the past who perished in the ensuing apocalypse. Using your all-powerful Harvester, you can extract their Essences and have them accompany you into the future. All while avoiding the nightmarish remnants of humanity, of course.
The game promises a blend of hard science fiction and psychological horror, with themes that explore humanity’s relationship with technology, identity, and survival. Early concept art reveals stark landscapes, eerie ruins, and a hauntingly beautiful aesthetic that merges organic and mechanical designs.
The game snippets we’ve seen to date bring to mind sci-fi masterpiece Bioshock (2007) and Bioshock 2 (2010), which also saw the player tasked with the grisly harvesting of essences from altered human creatures. In fact, Bioshock 2’s ‘Big Daddy’ kitted out in a diver’s suit and helmet and equipped with a drill on his arm could almost double for Cronos’ time-travelling and essence-harvesting scientist.
Meanwhile, the desolate landscapes, nightmarish creatures, resource management system, stealth mechanics, encounters with enigmatic entities, and minimal combat are all reminiscent (in the best way) of other classics such as the Dead Space franchise, and 2024’s deeply artistic Still Wakes the Deep.
Bloober Team is clearly leaning into what it does best here: atmospheric storytelling, psychological and survival horror, and puzzle solving. With the core team receiving support from the team behind the Silent Hill 2 remake, this AAA game, already boasting a larger budget than its predecessor, might be one to watch for Game of the Year contender, but only if the narrative offers more than just another third person shooter experience.
On that note, Bloober Team’s Creative Director Mateusz Lenart has mentioned in previous interviews that he wants their games to not only be focused on action but “to also tell interesting stories.”
The developers have said their aim here is to create a world that feels both alien and familiar, drawing inspiration from classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien. Cronos will also feature branching storylines based on player decisions, encouraging multiple playthroughs to fully uncover its layered narrative.
To boot, the gameplay is said to focus heavily on environmental storytelling, where the world itself becomes a key character. Players will get to interact with advanced alien technology, solve intricate puzzles, and make choices that influence the unfolding narrative.
While the future depicted in Cronos: The New Dawn may be a bleak one, Bloober Team’s is looking brighter than ever.
More as we have it.
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