After the successful launch of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team is moving onto its own material, and it looks like the first stop is Cronos: The New Dawn, which is set to release sometime in 2025. This'll be a mature-rated sci-fi survival horror game that'll see players explore a post-apocalyptic land in 1980s Poland.
"Following the success of Silent Hill 2, we are proud to present Cronos, an exciting new IP from Bloober Team," CEO Piotr Babieno says in a press release. "Our commitment to redefining the horror genre continues with the survival horror title, which represents a natural progression of our creative vision and our studio's strategy. By merging the eerie atmosphere of horror with the boundless potential of science fiction, Cronos promises to deliver a fresh survival experience."
The cinematic trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn, which was shown at the Xbox Partner Preview, does look interesting, but it certainly doesn't give too much of the game away. The first thing I'll say is that the character suited up in what looks like sci-fi diving armour (who is called the Traveler) looks pretty badass. Watching them shoot and punch their way through hordes of rancid and decaying zombies gives me the same vibes I got from walking around the USG Ishimura as Isaac Clarke in Dead Space.
"Players will take on the role of Traveler, an agent of the enigmatic Collective with a mission to extract selected people who didn't survive the apocalypse from the past," a press release says. "To complete the Collective's mission, players will need to survive a deadly wasteland created by a cataclysmic event known as the Change, filled with monstrous abominations that will challenge players' combat abilities."
We actually get to see what looks like the Traveler extracting someone at the end of the trailer. After losing a chess match to an old lady, the protagonist gets up, pushes the chess board aside, and opens up a weird claw machine in their hand. They could also be about to kill her, but I'm going to stay positive and say that she's just being taken to a safer place.
Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team's first original IP when it comes to survival horror, and I'm actually quite excited to see what the developer has in store for us. If you had told me that Bloober Team was making an original horror game a few months ago, I wouldn't have given it any notice. I wasn't really a fan of its work in the genre before, with the Layers of Fear remake and The Medium both falling flat for me. But I have to say the new Silent Hill 2 remake has filled me with at least some confidence.
