Bloober Team spills its guts on Cronos: The New Dawn's body horror, resource management and monster combat

In a new interview exclusively for the Future Games Show, Bloober Team has explained more about its time travelling tale of apocalypse, Cronos: The New Dawn. The studio outlined new details about the story, gameplay, mechanics, and more for this sci-fi tale where you visit the past to try and save the future.

Bloober Team call Cronos a "fully fledged survival horror game", where you play as a Traveller, "this mysterious person hidden beneath the environmental suit". As the Traveller you've been sent back in time to the ruins of human civilization to look for time rifts. It's not that easy of course, as you'll need to "solve some puzzles, fight with monsters, and basically survive along the way". Crucially, however, this is all to "jump back in time to extract key people who didn't survive the apocalypse [and] salvage what's left of humanity".

As to what happened to actually wipe out humanity as we know it, according to Bloober it was a disease. The symptoms started with people going blind, which then developed into a strong urge among the infected to gather together. The end result was "the merge", which adds an all important body horror element to everything.

This coming together of the infected has a practical impact on the action. When fighting Orphans, the creatures created by the disease, Bloober has one tip: "don't let them merge". That creates bigger and more dangerous creatures that will be harder to kill. Fortunately, the Traveller has a flamethrower in their loadout which can be used to burn the enemies you take down, so other monsters can't absorb their bodies. It can also stun living attackers and buy you the space and time to reposition and fight back, or use charging weapons to deliver a final blow - something Bloober describe as a "really important mechanic".

Another important mechanic in the gameplay is resource management, which Bloober explains is "very important". You'll need to plan what to take with you as you play, as your inventory is limited.

With an emphasis on body horror, difficult to kill enemies you need to make sure are 'dead' dead, and limited space for ammo and things you you need to stay alive, Cronos: The New Dawn is certainly ticking all the right survival horror boxes.

If you’re looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.

Leon Hurley
Managing editor for guides

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content. I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website. 

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