After experiencing Bloober Team’s exceptional remake of Silent Hill 2, I’m inclined to trust their unique take on horror games. It’s exciting to see that their upcoming project, Cronos: The New Dawn, looks absolutely impressive and seems to channel the visceral thrill of Dead Space.
Two of the creative minds behind this sci-fi survival horror game, co-directors Wojciech Piejko and Jacek Zięba, don’t hide their influences. In a recent preview, they mentioned drawing inspiration from iconic works like John Carpenter’s The Thing, the German series Dark, and Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, along with games such as Dead Space and Dark Souls. Cronos echoes some elements of Dead Space with its chilling mutated foes, an over-the-shoulder shooting view, and a mechanic for slicing off enemy limbs—though Piejko notes that Bloober Team plans to handle dismemberment quite differently than Visceral Games did.
Following the cinematic reveal trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn that made waves last October, Piejko and Zięba shared some gameplay insights in a developer diary released on Thursday. They introduce us to the protagonist, known as the Traveller, whom they compare to a deep-sea diver navigating the depths of time. The Traveller is tasked with venturing into the remnants of human civilization to rescue survivors. The game’s alternate-reality setting has been devastated by an event called the Change, which, according to the game’s lore, obliterated our world in the 1980s.
Both Piejko and Zięba have a rich background in sci-fi and psychological horror, having previously worked on Bloober Team’s other titles like Observer and The Medium. Cronos: The New Dawn is a fresh, original venture for Bloober, and they are also busy on another project in collaboration with Konami.
