Following the success of Silent Hill 2 (2024), I’ve been excited to see where Bloober Team goes next with its horror games. Which is why I’ve been interested in seeing more of Cronos: The New Dawn, the developer’s next original survival horror. I got to head to Oakland, California, to play through the opening couple of hours, and I was excited to see more when it releases later this year.
A time-bending horror mystery
Cronos: The New Dawn starts with you, a Traveler, sent back to the ruined district of New Dawn, inspired by the real Polish district Nowa Huta. It was an industrialized district, built under direction from the Soviets in the 1950s. New Dawn itself was destroyed, left in a ruinous state, where The Change, a disease, forced the city to be quarantined. There is something else going on, too, and while I didn’t get too many hints of what happened, the apocalypse that Cronos: The New Dawn exists in is far more visceral, with dust and blown out buildings lining the city.
You are not the first Traveler, instead following the trails of those who came before but failed. Your objective is to collect the essence of important people who were alive before the apocalypse, so you can use their skills to try and solve the apocalypse before it happens via time travel. I was told that these essences will haunt your suit as you carry them, although the demo cut off right before I collected one.
The story is doled out as you explore, with not even a simple story primer at the start of the journey. The world of Cronos: The New Dawn offers so much mystery and intrigue in its world and history, which made me love this choice as I continued to explore. There are plenty of notes and recordings to discover in the world that fill its bits of lore, and while the main story seems set to give you all of the answers you want, it’s fun to find new bits of lore in the world. As much as I liked the setup of the world and the real history the Poland-based developer injected, what really has me excited is the combat.
A chunky and methodical survival horror
The most exciting part of my time with Cronos: The New Dawn preview was discovering that there isn’t a dodge. The normal flow of a survival horror game often has you kiting enemies, dodging out of their range when they get too close, running back, and using that distance to light them up. While I did get to guide enemies in a compelling way during my time, not being able to move faster than the enemies had me treating combat far differently.
Cronos: The New Dawn operates with limited inventory space, and it is truly limited. I had only six slots to start, and I unlocked one additional spot, but I also got two weapons, a handgun and a shotgun. Both weapons have a normal fire and a charged shot. The charged shot can be difficult to get off during a fight, but for the pistol, it made the bullets pierce, and the shotgun a wider spread.
The enemies have a unique mechanic that all of the combat operates around. When you kill an enemy, their body remains, and it can be absorbed by another enemy. When an enemy absorbs another, they gain their power, becoming tougher than the two individual enemies. The only way to deal with these during the demo was to burn the bodies. I could only carry one torch canister at a time, so choosing when to burn bodies became a big choice. There were opportunities to use explosive barrels in combat, but since you can’t move barrels or enemy bodies, I had to try and get them closer to the barrels while also avoiding damage.
There weren’t an overwhelming number of enemies in most of the demo, with a few short sequences where several were attacked at once. After those fights, I often found myself completely wiped off ammo, since inventory was so limited, and I was forced to backtrack to supplies I couldn’t grab earlier. I never found myself completely doomed because of this, but I was always thinking about the sign of a great survival horror inventory system.
The finale of the demo was against a special enemy that was invulnerable unless hit with fire and could sink into the floor and reappear elsewhere. It was a fairly brutal fight that took place in a tiny apartment, forcing me to maximize my own supplies and the limited amount in the area. I defeated the boss on my final bullet and set off the final explosive barrel, at which point I was told I was one of the few people to beat the boss without dying. Normally, I would take this as a developer just gassing me up during a preview, but I had a clear view of the other people playing the demo, and I could see them struggling. Cronos: The New Dawn has teeth in its difficulty, but it’s not as brutal as Soulslike or anything.
I walked away from my time with Cronos: The New Dawn deeply intrigued by the sci-fi horror world Bloober has built based on the home many of them grew up in. The combat is an immediate elevation of the third-person action in Silent Hill 2 (2024), with tons of exciting strategic choices to make.
Cronos: The New Dawn is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC in 2025.
