I've played Cronos: The New Dawn - and it's a game changer for horror

Nowa Huta, Krakow, Poland. The setting for Bloober Team's upcoming Cronos: The New Dawn and the location of where a hands-on preview for the game itself is taking place.

In one of the grand office spaces in one of the huge Tadeusz Sendzimir Steelworks buildings, tens of PCs sit ready in waiting to give media and content creators, including myself, the very first external experience at what Bloober, the studio behind the Silent Hill 2 remake, has been cooking.

Bloober has been around for a while but it shot to true prominence with the incredible job it did with Silent Hill 2 that released in the back end of 2024.

And after being hands-on with Cronos: The New Dawn for a couple of hours or so in the most perfect setting for it, it seems the chefs at Bloober are cooking up another sizzler.

  Cronos: The New Dawn does not let players settle or get into a rhythm in its early stages - and that's perfect for a horror game / Bloober Team

Cronos: The New Dawn is set in an alternate reality in the throes of The Change, a cataclysmic event that changed humanity forever, and the steelworks are ground zero for it.

Players take on the role of a heavily armoured Traveler who must survive a brutal, post-apocalyptic world filled with gruesome monsters that can merge into more powerful foes to find rifts to travel back in time to 1980s Poland to extract and save key people.

Decisions made in terms of who to save and not affect how the story plays out.

Developers have said the game will last around 16 hours or so for the main campaign itself and in my preview, for the first two or so of those, I was thrown straight into it without too much context.

A few questions forming a cognitive test were navigated before I was let loose as the Traveler in the moody wasteland, tasked with initially navigating through it to find the previous Traveler who died on their mission.

The game feels a bit like Dead Space to begin with in that it's a third-person perspective with a heavily armoured main protagonist but the Traveler feels a lot heavier and bulkier than Isaac Clarke.

The Traveler starts armed with a pistol and finds more useful resources in the world, which is dimly lit, foggy and just plain dark when having to navigate through destroyed buildings.

It's in the buildings and underground where this game feels at its most frightening because of its tight spaces and dark lighting. They do an incredible job of creating tension when navigating through the world.

As well as weapons, useful resources can be crafted although some components are used to craft other items so real consideration needs to be given to thinking about what's best for each situation and gear can be upgraded. I found myself really poring over these decisions as they really are crucial in determining how situations play out.

There is no minimap - there's a compass that can be toggled to show the direction players need to head in but keeping the hud completely clear successfully adds to the sense of immersion.

  Do not let them merge. Trust me / Bloober Team

The key tagline for the game is 'don't let them merge' and developers have pushed this hard.

This could have fallen into the trap of being a bit of a gimmick of something trying to make Cronos: The New Dawn stand out in the horror space that gets old quickly.

But it becomes immediately apparent that this needs to be avoided at all costs and is truly where the tactical element of the game shines through in the early stages.

Monsters can be defeated with weapons or melee attacks but their bodies remain and can be merged by other foes to create an even more powerful monster for the player to tackle.

And they can do it more than once.

This not only makes them bigger and more powerful but also gives them the abilities of each monster that has merged. One merge is bad enough, anything more than that is just downright dangerous.

To stop enemies from merging, bodies of those defeated can be burned to fully destroy them, but fire is a very finite resource and that twinned with scarce ammo really means you need to plan and work out how best to tackle areas with multiple enemies.

And that's part of Cronos: The New Dawn - you will die working this out. You will. As I did a lot.

It's a difficult game as it is as the monsters can deliver devastating blows but adding in this tactical element on top of that makes it even more challenging but ultimately increases the feeling of reward when working out what doesn't work and successfully adapting.

Speaking to indy100, Jacek Zieba, co-director of Cronos: The New Dawn, said: "We love both old survival horror and new survival horror and we tried to connect old school with new school. It will be tough, you will die a few times, but if you learn and find your tactics, it shouldn't be a problem. It's about finding your way.

"It's very important what you do before, during and after the fight and if you make a mistake, it will cost you later."

Another tactical element is the pistol and shotgun found early on can both be charged up to deliver more devastating blows. Uncharged shots fire faster but deal significantly less damage, whereas the charged shots genuinely take a noticeable amount of time to hit their maximum impact.

This creates a fine balance between striking quickly on a foe bearing down on you and dealing meaningful damage. Charged shots are king where possible but, frequently, it isn't.

Wojciech Piejko, co-director, said: "You can still move slowly but it creates the feeling of 'will I land this shot?' If you do, it feels great."

Usually horror games focus on ammo and health preservation and there is that here but adding in these new tactical elements truly does make Cronos: The New Dawn unique in this regard. It makes every single encounter tense in the early hours. The moment you think you've got it figured out, you'll be given a rude awakening immediately.

Grzegorz Like, lead director and designer, said: "We play the game all the time because we're testing it right now and we know where the bad guys are but still, when we make bad choices, we get smashed. You need to adapt and you need to be very cautious in everything you do. You have to plan."

  There are a variety of gruesome enemies in Cronos: The New Dawn / Bloober Team

Throughout the world are anomalies which are environmental puzzles that need to be solved in order to progress. A rift weapon can be used to fix these but sometimes players will then need to backtrack slightly to move forward.

In buildings, there are puzzles to solve, such as keys and fuses to find, in order to progress and exploring usually yields more vital resources, so it's important to go off the beaten path to gain a needed advantage.

Developers were coy about boss fights before the event but I got to experience the first one at the end of the preview.

It was a menacing, towering monster that had weak points that needed to be hit with charged shots multiple times in order to take down. Charged shots here made working openings and landing consistently accurate blows crucial, or else it would result in inevitable death. Quite a lot more than I would like to admit...

There needs to be a huge shoutout to the menacing 80s inspired soundtrack too. I can't wait to hear more of it, especially as the soundtrack has been teased to sound more futuristic at times as well, adding to its variety.

While the 80s past setting itself and choices in this regard were not experienced during this preview, developers have said these will have a huge weighting going forward and there are multiple different endings for players to experience.

Piejko said: "If you extract the souls of people, sometimes you will experience different events in the game. For example, if you extracted me, and then you find my apartment in the future, you may find something you wouldn't otherwise have found.

"The longer you have these souls inside of you, the harder they scream. You're playing as a haunted suit at some points."

Piejko also said about how refreshing it is to be working on a new IP during such a difficult time for the gaming industry.

"We are feeling privileged to be bringing a new IP as these are dark times for the industry," he said. "We are seeing layoffs everywhere."

Zieba added Cronos: The New Dawn is the team's own "love letter to survival horror" and Like said the team has waited "years to make a game like this".

Here's to hoping Cronos: The New Dawn can sustain the tension, horror and strong tactical element throughout its duration and not fall into the trap that many horror games do of becoming predictable, repetitive and losing that fear factor as the hours go on.

Its merge mechanic may hold the key to this.

Elsewhere from indy100:

• Cronos: The New Dawn is 'different pizza' to other survival horror games say developers
• PS6 release date has been 'confirmed' and gamers have a lot to say about it

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