The Bloober team has established itself as the highest authority in the 7/10 horror game. That breakout success, the layer of fear, was primarily a viral hit thanks to a ton of jump scares and a dark, funny moment when the baby hits the wall. Good entertainment, but not high enough to compete with the Big Boys of Survival Horror. The reception to the Silent Hill 2 remake was a brand rehabilitation action, but standing on the shoulders of the giant is not exactly the same as rubbing his shoulders.
Chronos of the New Dawn It was an attempt by Bloober to do that, and expectations were never high. Game Director Jace Ziva positions Chronos as a cumulative effort following decades of internal iteration. “Observers show us your dialogue choices. Blair Witch taught us how to work with AI systems.
You can get a glimpse of this cumulative preview at Cronos’ closure at Nowa Huta Steelworks in Kraków. The over-the-shoulder view of travelers moving forward is an almost perfect match for James Sunderland’s model in the remake of the Silent Hill 2. As you can imagine, the development of Bloober’s Cronos and Silent Hill is split into two separate teams, but neither of them exist in the vacuum. “Team members switch projects, which helps in knowledge sharing and cross-team experiences,” Ziva clarifies.
At that time, Chronos. The main character, traveler ND-3576, is a temporary intruder dispatched to a Polish apocalyptic production of the 1980s, searching for the body of the ND-3500. The implicit meaning here is that the protagonist of Cronos: The New Dawn is the 76th attempt to complete this objective. This is not lost to me that it is not a million miles away from the central premise of the 2025 RPG Darling.
Traveler ND-3576’s “profession continues” declaration, cousin of “for the later people” of Expedition 33, but striking a very different chord. Lumiere’s expedition has melancholic optimism. Occupation, by definition, is a mission that you must look at to the end. If Lumière’s expedition is a cumulative effort of the indomitable human mind, the profession is a procession of corpses that leads something like a stone to its next purpose.
The plague has been an endemic threat in the fear of survival since the genre’s inception, but it is impossible to ignore the echo of Chronos’ Covid-19. The remains of humanity, known as orphans, merge into clumps of tentacles of flesh wrapped around debilitated corpses. They exist in the happy medium between the mold in Resident Evil and the necromorph in dead space. When they are not dead or lurking around corners, they are dragging themselves out of the growth of tumors that line the walls. Orphans begin their lives to the point of being nothing more than polycephalic chamblers, but they blend with their fallen brothers and quickly become a problem.
The merge system is Cronos: The New Dawn’s Showpiece, and is Bloober’s biggest challenge. Ziva considers it to be the most complex feature the studio has ever developed. “In the beginning, monsters will devour each other like ghouls, but there are no restrictions,” he explains. “They can grow very large and won’t fit through the door.” These runaway variants sound interesting in theory, but they won’t be of much help to my survival.
Survival horror is always at its best when combat is as puzzles as sliding mosaic tiles and shadow manipulation. This preview reassures that Bloober understands that too. Cronos combat works because it is the player’s responsibility to control all the variables in it. This starts with the usual survival horror principles – rationing your ammunition, keep moving, picking up all – and extend to the merge system itself. If you put the orphans on the left and right and don’t pay attention to disposal, you are feeding the beast.
“There is a fine line between challenge and frustration, and we did everything we could to stay on the right side of that,” Ziva says. Just as Cronos maintains the traditional panic of survival horror, there are countless ways to alleviate that difficulty. The containers dispensing an endless supply of fire torches inevitably lead to backtracking and accumulating me many times, burning their value, killing those that get too close to other tools in the traveler’s arsenal.
Organized combat sequences are obvious, usually with a little open space Too much Quiet for comfort. Running blindly through the strewn park plaza is a surefire way to get caught in an ambush. Instead, I carefully choose around the suburbs, testing the vitality of the corpses in stomps approved by Isaac Clarke, and send them out before merging with my nearest companions. The essential shaking through underground flesh caves, the only way to advance in the Chronos linear-level design, is much more difficult to come out unharmed.
In these claustrophobic ranges, I am forced to rely on the environment and ducking behind the pillars to force space between me and the orphan mob that gush to meet me. I’m waiting enough to distribute one of my precious bullets and get close enough to an explosion canister to catch as much as possible in the explosion. It’s a frenzied skirmish that forces me to think logically in an encounter designed to make me panick.
“After years of developing horror games that are close to adventure titles, we wanted to evolve,” Ziva told me. “We were ready to do that by getting heavy in gameplay.” The weapon of choice for the Traveler ND-3576 is The Relic, a shapeshift firearm that evokes the service weapon of control with its minimalist usefulness. Once the required modules are attached, the artifact can be a pistol, a shotgun, or even a brass knuckle for a melee brawl. Additionally, additional modules take up valuable inventory space – Resident Evil’s Tetris-style inventory will last, regardless of future progress.
When evaluated in that other part, Chronos is not an epic innovation in the realm of survival horror. Even merge systems are fundamental pillars, but not entirely new mechanical phenomenon. From Kirby to Dark Souls, players have consumed the essence of their enemies and have strengthened and evolved virtual avatars for decades. The concept of “management” of corpses is a key principle of dead space, project zonvoids, and biohazard.
“We didn’t try to create something that wiped out other survival horror games from the map,” reveals Zięba. “Let’s do something even more different.” With Bloober, the difference lies in the aesthetics at least at first. “Brutal architecture is monumental, magnificent, and terrifying. It is also a powerful reflection of the times. But we need to remember: we chose not only an architectural style, but the entire district.”
Kraków’s Nowa Huta is a socialist realistic symbol of Polish history and culture, and a direct inspiration for the fictional New Dawn city. “We chose it for its unique history and architecture. Built from scratch in empty fields, the Utopian city is centered around what was once the largest steel factory in all of Europe.”
Heading towards the interiors of Nowa Huta Steelworks is like going back in time. There is an eerie and broad sense that staff members all stood up and left collectively for the day, cleaning up all the values they didn’t nail when they went. The endless white corridor converges on a spiral marble staircase that opposes broken blinds and thread-rimmed carpets in adjacent offices.
The same stops in space and time extend to Chronos. The dustmoches swirl with a fog-filled lighting system cast a long shadow on the futuristic technology neon glow. The atmosphere is thick, oppressive and claustrophobic. Under my feet, at Nowa Huta Bomb Shelter, a wall-mounted map that balances the phone, not far away.
In the booming landscape of the Polish gaming industry, 11-bit studios, CD Projekt Red, Techland and CI Games are all hosting courts with Bloober. Frostpunk, my war, the Witcher, the Lord of Falls – the irony that was brought to me runs through them all, and is a testament to the resilience of human beings made possible at the expense of morality. Nevertheless, Chronos implicitly hones in a way that is not most games, even in native studios.
“We have stopped ‘hesitating’ about Poland,” Ziva agrees. “If Polish developers weren’t in love with Sapkovsky’s book, then they believe we’ll say it and show it to the world, then the Witcher doesn’t exist. It tells us that the nearest blueber has led to critical acclaim. in front The Silent Hill 2 remake is the closest thing to embracing Polish identity. Observers is a cyberpunk detective game whose mind hacking premise is likened to the “psychological rape” of Krakovia’s lower class, and although it was technically not perfect, it certainly had something to say.
Zięba is getting closer to Bloober’s pitch and Cronos’ approach, but when it comes to the more original components, he remains tightly closed lips. Time is the heart of Chronos. It’s literally named. The mission of traveler ND-3576 is to extract people from a historic timeline that may avoid an apocalyptic future, but the full meaning of this is yet to be seen. What happens if I reject that call?
“Good question,” Ziba said with all his heart. “After the first hour or two of your performances, what you have or have (Traveler ND -3576) changes dramatically as the story unfolds.” The traveler’s predecessor is functionally identical as long as he wears the same industrial sci-fi diving suit. It is still unknown if this is a clone. Obviously, the time loop situation cannot be ruled out either.
As far as horror games go, Chronos is not the most frightening thing I’ve played. Perhaps I’ve been bleached – my fear benchmarks are in PT, Alien Isolation, and Soma – but it’s hard to feel vulnerable when your digital avatar is a combat-ready armored shell. This is not a major complaint as it is expected management. Orphans jumping out of the floor and out of the doorway is a common occurrence enough to keep me on proverbs, but for most of the preview, they marinate in an apocalyptic Polish vibe. Overall, it’s a constructive gameplay experience rather than an endless queue of jumpscare, and it’s all better.
If this all sounds like dead space and Resident Evil had a Soviet baby, you’re not wrong. Chronos doesn’t reinvent the wheels, but it adds a few new spokes and a coat of cement grey paint. “We see Cronos as a love letter to the survival horror genre (…). For a while, we haven’t seen third-person survival horror that is not a sequel or remake. In that respect, Cronos is a breath of fresh air in a slightly old landscape. It’s impossible to separate Cronos from countless influences, but cumulatively, it’s original enough to get excited about Bloober’s original project, perhaps the first.
