Developer Bloober Team has perhaps more eyes than ever on it thanks to the rather successful, critically and commercially, Silent Hill 2 remake that was released in late 2024. But that's a remake, and Cronos: The New Dawn is the opposite – an all-new survival horror IP. What sort of statement do you try to make following all of that success with the first original work since?
"That we can go really heavy," says Cronos: The New Dawn co-director Jacek Zięba, immediately, when I ask directly during an interview at GDC 2025.
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Bloober Team
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Release date: 2025
"When we started doing Cronos, our second team was already doing the Silent Hill 2 remake," adds fellow co-director Wojciech Piejko. "So from the beginning, we don't want to overlap with them. So we said, 'OK, let's make it more gameplay heavy, like a limited inventory, a lot of decisions, more tools, more weapons.'"
"I think this game is more Resident Evil-ish," he continues, "but still, we've got a deep psychological story to tell."
Familiar and unfamiliar
"We worked together on The Medium, and now we have a bigger fish here," says Piejko. "Our dream come true; our first survival horror game made by us as directors."
"We are so excited that we get out from the wardrobe," says Zięba.
"After four years of making this, finally showing it," adds Piejko, "it's awesome."
The basic premise of Cronos: The New Dawn sees players take on the role of a Traveller, described as "an agent of the mysterious Collective, emerging from a dystopian future to dive back into time and extract key people before they perish in the apocalypse" as part of the press release revealing the first Cronos gameplay trailer.
"We are in some strange future," says Zięba. "We don't know exactly the year, but what's important: the world ends in [the] '80s, and we are in Poland. So everything you will see, it's how Poland looked in [the] '80s, but never had a chance to go to '90s – so it's alternative history. This allows us to use unique Polish aesthetics, use brutalistic architectures, and mix it with cassette futurism sci-fi you know from Alien or Star Wars."
There's an analog-style sci-fi bent to Cronos: The New Dawn, which is also very Polish. Both are intentional and essential, according to the co-directors. All the in-game writing is in Polish, for example, though you can hover over them for translated subtitles. Zięba shows me this while pointing at some store signs during a hands-off demo, explicitly noting that the design decision bumps up the weirdness and alienness for other players that don't know Polish.
"The New Dawn, it's a subtitle for our game, but also the name of the district where the game is happening," says Piejko. "And The New Dawn is based on a real district in Krakow, which in the real world is called Nowa Huta, which means 'New Steelworks'. So we recreated it – of course, [we] changed a little bit here and there, but if you came to Poland, to Krakow, you can recognize a lot of places from the game there."
Merge madness
"It's a full-fledged survival horror game with limited inventory, and all you can imagine, but we did something special to spice up the combat," says Piejko, referring to one of Cronos: The New Dawn's core mechanics.
In short, your enemies can merge together to create even more horrifying monsters. Even if you've downed one enemy, if they're not fully neutralized – by, for example, burning them – they can be gobbled up by another to evolve into a singular critter that's bigger and badder with additional abilities.
Zięba demonstrates this merging by circling what looks to be an abandoned park, waking up all the Orphans (Cronos's name for its abominations) in the area. As he does, there's a brief, alien-looking animation where one Orphan gets close enough and swallows another, and then another, and then another, until the hulking monstrosity in front of us only barely resembles what was, in hindsight, its meeker forebearer. Despite the location, the following fight is no picnic.
"We built everything around this merge mechanic; our weapons are prepared for crowd control," says Piejko. You can fire your pistol into enemies like normal, for example, or you can line them up and charge it up to fire piercing shots, getting literally more bang for your buck. Similarly, a charged shotgun shot increases its spread, letting you take on enemies over a wider area.
"This also recreates a feeling of an old school survival horror game as you're glued to the ground while aiming," adds Piejko. "Here you can move, but really slowly, as a good risk and reward type of thing."
Inspired design
While some of Cronos: The New Dawn's inspirations are more obvious than others, one stands above the rest: Dark, the surreal time travel Netflix series. A short description of the show is basically impossible, but it plays with the horror inherent to time travel while also attempting to prevent an apocalypse with damning ramifications and philosophical quandaries.
"It was a huge impact on us when we watched it," says Zięba, "even during The Medium. But for this game, [Dark] was one of the backbones."
The duo rattle off a bunch of other inspirations in quick succession: 12 Monkeys, Annihilation, John Carpenter's The Thing, the Blame manga by Tsutomu Nihei and the character Killy's gun, specifically, for the game's discharge weapons.
"In the case of games, all the new [Resident Evil games]; maybe mostly all the Resis in a way, different ones, different tastes," says Zięba. "Dead Space. Even The Last of Us – this game has a lot of different tastes of survival horror."
We built everything around this merge mechanic; our weapons are prepared for crowd control
"We are also inspired by Dark Souls games, so we are sometimes putting traps in a level to change the pace," adds Piejko while we explore an area with bright, green boils dotting the ground. "On the outside you run, and now running [inside], it's not the best idea. Of course, we are not wanting to be bad game masters so you can spot all the mines if you pay attention."
It's not just traps and level design, however. Zięba notes that the FromSoftware approach to storytelling and overall design philosophy are also alive and well in Cronos: The New Dawn. If you want to know everything, all the lore details and specifics, you're going to need to dig deep – and Cronos will absolutely punish you if you're too relaxed and lackadaisical.
Despite all of these disparate inspirations, the co-directors aren't concerned about Cronos: The New Dawn losing its own identity in the mix. In fact, they laugh when I ask how they make sure not to get lost in the soup of it all.
"We have a game based in Poland's '80s in a strange future, in sci-fi cassette futurism," says Zięba. "I think we are distinct."
Cronos: The New Dawn is set to release for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in 2025. No definitive release date has been announced as of yet. If you're looking for something to play in the meantime, it would probably be worth checking out the best games to play in 2025 so far.
