Bloober Team, best known as the developers of the Silent Hill 2 remake, have revealed a new gameplay trailer for their in-development survival horror game. Cronos: The New Dawn, originally announced in October 2024, started releasing gameplay and dev diaries just last month. However, this trailer is the game’s first full gameplay trailer. Let’s take a look.
In the Cronos: The New Dawn gameplay trailer, titled ‘DON’T LET THEM MERGE,’ we’re shown some of the disgustingly slimy visuals as well as the protagonist of the game. Through the third-person perspective we see them navigating the harsh environments and fighting enemies with unfamiliar weapons that make familiar weapon sounds. “ADAPT OR PERISH” flashes across the screen as the player character fires a few shotgun rounds into baddies. Eventually, the player character comes across an NPC that tells them it’s a good thing they’re around before referring to the PC as ‘traveler.’
While the trailer doesn’t do a good job of explaining what DON’T LET THEM MERGE means, one of the primary gameplay mechanics of Cronos: The New Dawn is that enemies don’t stay dead for long. The player must burn the bodies of the enemies after they’re felled otherwise they can be absorbed into existing enemies. A somewhat novel spin on an existing survival horror mechanic. Wojciech Piejko, Co-Director and Designer at Bloober Team had this to say about letting them merge.
How do you fight them? Fire! Burn the fallen before they merge with living creatures. The merge changes the game, adding a whole new layer of strategy to combat. Push your survival instincts to the max.
Bloober Team is also taking time to acknowledge that the game’s soundtrack is created by a collaboration between Arkadiusz Reikowski and Polish-Ukranian indie folk band Zazula. Bloober Team is promising a score as eerie and immersive as the world you’ll explore.
Cronos: The New Dawn Key Features
- Survive The Future. Salvage The Past – Set in a grim world where Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology, Cronos: The New Dawn lets you experience a gripping story that straddles the line between past and future. You are a Traveler working for the enigmatic Collective, tasked with scouring the wastelands of the future in search of time rifts that will transport you to 1980s-era Poland.
- Adapt or Perish – In a desolate world filled with ever-present danger, your survival hinges on your ability to strategize and plan ahead. The enemies you’ll encounter are nightmarish creatures, born from the remnants of humanity – defeating them will require you to make full use of your arsenal.
- Don’t Let Them Merge – The creatures you kill won’t stay dead for long. Fallen enemies can be absorbed by others — through a grotesque process called Merging — to become faster, tougher, and far deadlier. The only way to stop them? Burn their bodies. And do it fast.
- Harvester of Souls – 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. But be wary: these essences have a profound impact on your journey.
Cronos: The New Dawn is aiming for a 2025 release on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S and can be wishlisted on all available platforms. Keep an eye on the MonsterVine front page as we continue providing coverage on Cronos: The New Dawn and other Bloober Team titles and games in the survival horror genre.
