A sci-fi horror game from top developer Bloober Team? Consider us already signed up. A new Cronos: New Dawn trailer was just released and the upcoming survival horror looks packed to the brim with violence and red-tinged hostility. After the success of the Silent Hill 2 Remake, Bloober Team’s new title takes on a similar third-person over-the-shoulder format with aesthetics that are quite different but still hinge on unsettling its players.
Built on Unreal Engine 5 and coming to PCs, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime this year, the trailer featuring the Cronos: New Dawn gameplay is a nice teaser of what fans can expect from the game. Many have likened the visuals to Dead Space, but the post-apocalyptic, futuristic, nightmarish landscapes appear to have something more to offer.
The Cronos: New Dawn gameplay trailer in intriguing beyond measure.
The Cronos: New Dawn Trailer Showcases Some Exciting Gameplay
When you figure out your niche, it’s often best to explore it to its full extent and see what you can offer. The Bloober Team’s new title does just that, taking some of the horror elements from its various successful horror games like the Silent Hill 2 remake, Blair Witch, Layers of Fear, and Observer, to create something new.
Development for the project is said to have begun in 2021, with The Medium team assigned to the project. The shift away from the first-person, narrative-driven psychological horror style to a more action-oriented release is certainly interesting, but we’re excited to see how it fully takes shape.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a pulse-pounding, third-person survival horror game where time is your deadliest weapon — and your worst enemy.
Survive a brutal future, dive back in time, and stop nightmarish creatures from merging into unstoppable abominations. #CronosTheNewDawn pic.twitter.com/FoN2Fy7rYB
— Projekt Parasol (@pl_evil) April 16, 2025
The cinematic trailer released five months ago was extremely successful in building up tension around the game, with the sound of a ticking clock interspaced with visuals of mutilated, humanoid creatures leaping out of the dark. While that trailer focused more on atmosphere building, the new Cronos: New Dawn gameplay trailer gives us a closer look at what we actually get to do in the game.
The visuals on the new Chronos game are highly detailed.
What Do We Know About Cronos: New Dawn
Cronos, the new survival horror, takes place across two time periods that are very distinct from each other—one in the post-apocalyptic future and the other in the fictional district of 1980s Poland. You play as the Traveler, an agent of the Collective. Despite being a protagonist that’s almost as eerie as the monsters you have to take down, your mission is for the betterment of humanity.
Your purpose is to find time rifts and jump back in time to locate some important characters who perished during “The Change” and collect their essence to prevent the apocalypse. While you explore the lands and try to rescue their lost souls, you are forced to confront the oddly named “Orphans.” No not children, just some humanoid supernatural creatures who are the remnants of humanity and are a real challenge to kill.
The varied zombie-like creatures come with a warning—Do not let them merge. Allowing the remains of the Orphans to merge grants them additional strengths and abilities, and with them already equipped to flail around with their misshapen limbs and spew toxic body fluids at you, it’s in your best interest to incinerate them as soon as you can.
The Cronos: New Dawn Trailer Gives Us a Glimpse of the Combat Mechanics
Cronos: New Dawn is an action game after all, so you don’t have to run around the toxic wasteland defenseless. There appears to be a few different guns and launchers you can attack with to take your enemy down. The trailer suggests you should be able to swap between weapons quickly, to find your killer tool of choice. Melee fighting is also possible in the game, so if you want to drop the guns and use your fists, the devs are not going to stop you.
Your astronaut hazmat suit-like attire should grant you some protection in these trying times. The co-directors refer to the suit design inspired by your role as a “diver in time,” and we love how this was conceptualized.
We’re hoping the Cronos: New Dawn gameplay goes beyond a point-and-shoot game to add in some, more intricate, layers of combat, but we didn’t see too much of that in the trailer yet. There does appear to be some interesting travel-mechanics that will allow you to rebuild bridges and explore the area more comfortably, so you will have to apply yourself every once in a while. Expect some zero-gravity spaces to explore in between all the rubble-filled landscapes.
We’ve all watched 12 Monkeys and wondered how we’d perform if we were tasked with preventing the apocalypse, so now is a good time to find out.
Step into a nightmarish scenario with Cronos: New Dawn, and see who emerges victorious.
Final Thoughts on Bloober Team’s New Title
The Cronos: New Dawn trailer doesn’t give too much away about the story or gameplay, but it does give us a clear picture of Bloober Team’s attempt to establish a new horror franchise. The success of the game will tell us whether this will be possible, and we’re still far from release as the team hasn’t announced a launch date yet—other than stating it will be out in 2025.
The brutalist, retro-futuristic visuals are great, the deadly creatures are just the right amount of unappealing, and the sound design is exceptionally immersive. From what we can see, the team has the right ingredients for success on its hands, with a tad bit more action than its previous titles.
Jacek Zieba and Wojciech Piejko, co-directors of Chronos, explained that the game is inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing and the Dark television series, both of which are exceptional pieces of media. They also credit Dark Space, 12 Monkeys, and the Dark Soul series for providing inspiration, and we can definitely see how all of these pieces come together in the trailer.
The air of mystery surrounding the characters and the mission in the trailer has built up considerable excitement around the Cronos sci-fi game, so we’re hoping the team will be quick to decide on a release date. The body horror aspect in confronting the humanoid creatures is going to be central to how much of the gameplay you’ll be able to tolerate. The co-directors confirmed that there will be locations with huge walls of flesh to witness, so you best prepare accordingly.
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