Horror fans don’t have a grand slate of triple-A scares to look forward to in 2025, if we’re being real. There’s no sign of Resident Evil 9, Silent Hill f is yet to be given a release date, and well, it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Hideo Kojima’s OD. That said, indie horror developers continue to prevail, providing us with unforgettable experiences while we all patiently rub our hands together and wait for Capcom or Konami to drip-feed us more information about horror fans’ most beloved of series.
Bloober Team is one such developer. Hot off the success of its spectacular Silent Hill 2 Remake, the Polish studio has no intentions of slowing down, with multiple projects in the works – including another in collaboration with Silent Hill publisher, Konami. What fans want to keep their eyes peeled for in the immediate future, however, is sci-fi survival horror, Cronos: The New Dawn.
Following the release of Cronos: The New Dawn’s gameplay trailer, DON’T LET THEM MERGE, I sat down with the game’s co-directors, Wojciech Piejko and Jacek Zięba, to find out more about what to expect from the game, and what sets it apart from its previous titles.
VG247: The trailer doesn’t give away too much about Cronos’ story. From what I can gather, we’re on a mission to find time rifts to the past, before the apocalypse – where we extract souls from the undead to return to the future with us – while fending off merging enemies; can you tell me more about what to expect from the plot?
Wojciech Piejko: Your info is true, and of course, we don’t want to share too much because in horror, the less you know, the more scared you are. We don’t want to spoil the story, but we can say that it starts big.
[You must] survive along the way, [have] encounters with monsters, solve puzzles, and of course, explore the world to know more about its inhabitants, the story, and connect all the dots. Then you are jumping back in time, landing a few days before the apocalypse. With each jump, you are closer to day zero.
You will experience how the world [is] decaying during this apocalyptic event we are calling The Change. And as you said, your goal is to extract people. So, of course you will meet the cast of the characters who live there, and to be honest, the game is all about this.
It starts quickly, but then turns into a more intimate story about the characters, who they are and how all of this is connected. The thing that you don’t see in the trailer is that we also [have] these dialogue options in the game. [You can] choose, sometimes, who you will extract. Imagine you’ve been sent for me, but maybe Jacek is cooler, so maybe you will extract him. Decisions everywhere!
VG247: In one of the first cinematic trailers for Cronos, we see the Traveler playing chess with an elderly lady, before eventually extracting her. Is this an example of one of the interactions where we can make a choice about who to extract in the game?
Wojciech Piejko: Yeah, exactly. So, you notice at the end [of the trailer] that she nods. She agrees to be extracted and the Traveler puts her hand on the old lady. That was the extraction process with this contraption we are calling the Essence Harvester.
VG247: On that note, can we know more about the mysterious character shown at the end of the DONT LET THEM MERGE trailer?
Jacek Zięba: How to answer that [while] not spoiling stuff… he’s there to help you and to guide you, because you wake up a little fresh to this world. With the character, you can discover what happened here and how it happened and he can maybe guide you as a mentor or something.
Wojciech Piejko: Basically, he’s taking care of the Traveler’s base, so you will interact with him a lot.
VG247: Are there multiple Traveler’s you can cross paths with?
Jacek Zięba: It’s something you learn [in] the game, but we can spoil it a little. Because of the time travel shenanigans, there cannot be more jumpers [Travelers] active at the same time. There’s only one diver, [as] to not mess too much with the time.
VG247: The Merge system. Can you tell us more about what this system is and how it innovates combat?
Jacek Zięba: It’s our recipe for creating something fresh and different. The whole combat [system] is built around it. If you kill enemies, their bodies will fall and then other enemies can absorb them and merge to evolve into something stronger.
You need to do everything you can to not let them do it [merge], because if you do, they can regain some health and [evolve] into stronger options. And then, in a way, you are back to square one; ‘so, I’m in the middle of the fight, but there’s an enemy here again, and I have less ammo’. So on, so on.
This can also create very emergent scenarios, [depending on] how you play the game and if you didn’t notice [that] it’s happened. Even if you’re a skilled player – you play a lot of survival horrors [and] you know what you are doing – the merge happens, [and] you will throw everything just to stop it. That’s also a great experience.
Wojciech Piejko: We noticed, for example, during playtests that people are more afraid of the merge than being killed, and that’s great.
As Jacek said, if you let monsters merge, you will encounter less monsters, but more powerful ones. You should not allow this to happen, because the leveled up ones are really powerful. [Merging] is also unlocked from the get-go, so it’s not like we are hiding something. Now, if you – in a way – fail a couple of times and let them eat, eat, and eat, you will have a very big problem!
VG247: With that in mind, the Merge system sounds as though it will see some players having very different experiences compared to one another, and that it encourages you to fight and burn every enemy you come across – efficiently – rather than trying to run past them?
Wojciech Piejko: It’s a survival horror. [There’s] a lot of backtracking. The body left behind may backfire at you when you get back. [The] other monsters will absorb all of them and become really powerful. Of course, you have the tools to deal with it – like the flamethrower mounted on the arm of the Traveler. There is a shot in the trailer when she burns the bodies.
[There’s] resources, decisions; ‘should I burn them? Or should I, for example, leave this flame thrower charged to escape from the monster’s grasp?’ because it also serves as your panic button. You are surrounded, you shoot this burst of fire, create this fire circle around you, [and] all the monsters are burning for a couple of seconds. They are basically stunned, [and] it buys you time.
But also [these] merge mechanics push combat into [a] more strategic area. For example, most of the weapons have these charge mechanics. You [may] notice that the Traveler sometimes shoots the gun normally, but sometimes charges [it]. Charge shots pierce through enemies. So, you can do these tricks; burn a few of them, 1745433485 they’re dancing in fire. Now, align them, charge, shoot, and kill them in quick succession so no one will merge.
Jacek Zięba: That’s a master class!
Wojciech Piejko: [There’s also the] shotgun. You have to increase the spread so you can have better crowd control and kill more monsters at the same time.
Jacek Zięba: There’s lots of decisions; quick ones during fights and longer ones during exploration and [the] story. Who should I take with me in case of crafting and so on?
VG247: The game, at a glance, bears a lot of similarities to Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol, Returnal, SOMA, and games of that ilk. What do you think makes Cronos: The New Dawn stand out from these games? Why should players be excited about this?
Jacek Zięba: In gameplay, the merge is the most important thing. This is what makes Dead Space special in case of [its] gameplay. It’s not just killing enemies, you need to cut them. That’s something that was something new. Okay, headshots are not working. I need to cut enemies, I need to see where their limbs are, etc.
Wojciech Piejko: And Alan Wake has this flashlight to destroy the armor!
Jacek Zięba: For us, it’s the merge and how it changes the whole combat from what you know from other survival horrors.
Wojciech Piejko: I think the big difference is that Returnal and Dead Space are happening in space or on a different planet (or when we are talking about the Returnal, maybe in the character’s head). Our game is set on Earth, in Poland. We’ve created this destroyed world; let’s say the apocalypse happened in the 80s and we are [experiencing] an alternate history. The world was destroyed and then the Travelers were created. Our technology in the game is more analog, more heavy cassette futurism, like the Alien franchise, Star Wars and stuff. That was also super important.
The dialogue decisions we mentioned; I know that you can also choose some questions in Alan Wake, but here, you can affect more things with your dialogue options and choose different characters to extract and so on.
Jacek Zięba: The merge is the most important gameplay wise because the whole gameplay is built around it, but [it’s] the combination of how the world is created, story, character, etc. It’s also something – in our opinion – new and unique for players to explore. If you love sci-fi, I think you will love this game. If you love mystery stories, how it all happened and post-apocalyptic scenarios, you will also love it. If you love survival horror, this game is for you.
VG247: The way you talk about the Merge system and the decisions, and the fact we know that extracted souls can deliver haunting visions of the past to the Traveler; could you say that the souls that the Traveler extracts are merging with them, as the monsters merge with one another?
Jacek Zięba: It’s a very nice idea and in a way, we can say yes, in [regards to] symbolism and everything. In a way, depending on which souls you take, you will be a little bit of a different being.
Wojciech Piejko: You also encounter different events. To not spoil the story, I’ll extract Jacek. Now, when I go to his desk, I will see different things, for example, and I will be able to decipher more. Also, [the] essences of people [come] with perks, [meaning] it can affect your play style.
During your normal exploration (not during the jumps to the past), you can also sometimes find old Travelers [that have been] killed and some of them still have souls inside of them. So, you can transfer them to your Traveler, but the trick is you have only three souls you can carry at a time.
Jacek Zięba: [There’s] another decision layer there.
VG247: With that in mind, is there a level of replayability to Cronos?
Jacek Zięba: Of course. The whole game is built a little like Silent Hill. When you play again, you will understand all the stuff differently and you will find new ones [essences/souls] that can, you know, create a more coherent idea [of] what happened here, who is who, and why it’s happening. In the case of gameplay, it’s [a matter of] upgrading different weapons or upgrading your weapons to full potential, finding the collectibles, but also choosing different souls that can come with different perks.
The first time, you play more for the story. The second time, [you] play more for the gameplay, choos[ing] the souls that [have] perks [which] are nice for your play style. I think this game can be played twice or even more to discover different combinations of weapons, perks, souls, and story.
Wojciech Piejko: You have different characters and they have different endings.
VG247: Bloober Team is known for its psychological horror games, and now, the brilliant Silent Hill 2 Remake. What made the studio decide to branch out into sci-fi horror, and can we still expect some elements of psychological horror here?
Wojciech Piejko: I know that Cronos at first glance looks like you are this character that saves the world. The stage is very big, and we don’t want to spoil much, but we can assure you that there is a really cool psychological layer [to] the whole story when you start to connect the dots. Everything will start to connect, and [you’ll see] what your place is in this story.
It started big, but it narrows down to a more psychological story about yourself. And people trapped [in] this time travel story. The Dark Netflix TV series was a really, really great inspiration for us, but we reverted it. Dark starts with this intimate story about the characters and then goes big, to the destroyed world, back in time.
You also ask about why a sci-fi story? Back in the day, we already knew that our second team (we have two core teams) was cooking the Silent Hill 2 Remake. We want to make something different, but to not overlap with this game, to not make another ‘more grounded’ horror. So we were more, ‘okay, let’s do a more action oriented game. Let’s say we are closer to Resident Evil than to Silent Hill in terms of gameplay.’
Jacek Zięba: It was our dream to create a survival horror game. We are survival horror hardcore players, so in a way, Cronos is our love letter to the genre. A lot of you will feel [that] ‘this is more like Resident Evil 2, or Resident Evil 3 or 4, or maybe this more like Dead Space. Oh, this level is more like Dark Souls!’
That’s interesting. It [pushes us] further than psychological horror with fragile characters. Let’s play as a capable character, but in a very [wild] world that can give you more action and a different experience. At the same time, [we need] to be true to our roots and not forget about psychological horror.
All in all, it’s great to see Bloober Team applying its storytelling skills to something new and more action-oriented, and here’s hoping that the developer continues going from strength to strength with Cronos: The New Dawn.
Cronos: The New Dawn is expected to release during 2025, but there’s no concrete release date just yet.
