Sat in a San Francisco hotel room with the lights off and the curtains closed watching a hands-off demo of Bloober’s survival horror Cronos: The New Dawn, it’s clear the Polish horror developer has newfound confidence after the success of its Silent Hill 2 remake.
Cronos has been developed by a different internal team than Silent Hill 2, but the survival horror experience has rubbed off positively as the development team tackle an original take on the genre. The game was announced in October last year when I spoke with the game’s co-directors about following in Konami’s footsteps. Then at last month’s Game Developer Conference – sat, appropriately, in the dark – I was able to see Cronos in action ahead of its new gameplay trailer released yesterday.
What followed was the culmination of all Bloober has achieved. Cronos combines the psychological horror the studio is known for, with the survival horror of Silent Hill and, most intriguingly, an authentic Polish setting that together feels like a natural evolution for the team.
Cronos features a dirty, grounded take on sci-fi set in an alternate history where an apocalyptic event took place in 1980s Krakow. Players take on the role of a mysterious traveller in a metallic suit sent back in time to explore the ruins of human civilisation. Along the way they piece together not only what happened to humanity, but previous travellers who failed in their mission by discovering journals left behind to decipher the mystery.