What to expect from Bloober Team's Cronos: The New Dawn
, by Quentin
The Krakow-based Polish studio made a name for itself in 2016 with Layers of Fear, a masterful, harrowing horror game that made its mark on the videogame landscape as soon as it was released. However, it would take several years for the Bloober Team to confirm that it wasn't just a fluke.
The Bloober Team and the art of blowing hot and cold
Indeed, Layers of Fear 2 failed to match the dazzling performance of the first opus. Other productions, such as Blair Witch and The Medium, received lukewarm reviews, creating a certain amount of scepticism among the general public. This skepticism was reinforced when the studio was announced to be in charge of the remake of Silent Hill 2. The first images, far from reassuring, only fuelled the concerns.
And yet, miraculously, the remake turns out to be of the highest quality. Respectful of the original work, it makes a few welcome additions and modifications, while relying on modernized gameplay and polished graphics.
A promising new license
It's now 2025, and just one year after Silent Hill 2, the Bloober Team is back with something new: Chronos: The New Dawn. Let's take a look at what this new title promises. The game plunges us into a horrific third-person experience, set in a retro-futuristic universe in Eastern Europe. The scenario, still unclear at this stage, invites us to “fight for our future, while trying to save our past”.
The protagonist is a “traveler in the service of the enigmatic Collective”, equipped with heavy armor giving him a menacing appearance. His mission: to explore the wastelands of an apocalyptic future in search of temporal rifts, in order to bring them back to 1980s Poland.
The game seems to be all about survival, with limited resources in terms of both ammunition and resources. Enemies are numerous, monstrous and resiliant. It's not enough to shoot them: you have to burn their bodies to prevent them from fusing together. If they succeed, they will evolve and become even more formidable.
So far, the scenario seems rather cliche and, like The Medium, seems to revolve around two temporalities. We can only hope for a better story and narrative. It will be interesting to see whether the Bloober Team has learned from all the feedback.
The studio keeps working with Konami
At the same time, the company announced that it was officially working on a new remake of the Silent Hill license, now tackling the first opus released in 1999 on the very first PlayStation.
A potentially salutary decision, given the game's desperate need for one. It's difficult for today's gamers to immerse themselves in this universe with the original game as their gateway. Even back then, the gameplay was crude and unintuitive, and could only rely on its sensational narrative and unusual atmosphere.
If it's as successful as the remake of the second, there's no doubt that we could see the same fate for Silent Hill 3, or of course Silent Hill 4.
As for Cronos: The New Dawn, it will be released in autumn 2025 (no exact date yet), on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
By the way, what's do you think of Bloober team? Which of their titles have surprised you the most and, conversely, which works have made less of an impact in your eyes? As always, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments section below!