One of the most wonderful things about videogames is their power to transport us to places we’d never have visited otherwise – and increasingly that’s not just imagined fantasy worlds but ones rooted in real-world locations. Bloober Team recently straddled the two, taking us to a supernatural version of small-town America in its excellent Silent Hill 2 remake. But for its follow-up, Cronos: The New Dawn, the developer is returning to its native Poland.
For Edge 410’s cover story, we visit Bloober’s studio in Krakow for a world-first hands-on with the game – and to scope out the real-life locations on which it’s based. Touring the streets and bunkers of Nowa Huta, a Communist ‘ideal city’ that was never completed, we learn why Bloober chose it as the basis of its sci-fi horror game. It’s a fascinating place, recreated in Cronos with the same painstaking detail as Silent Hill – even before Bloober drops an apocalypse on it, tearing the buildings asunder and transforming its residents into monstrous creatures.
As we learn during our demo, this is the setup for a muscular action game with a horrifying edge. Game director Jacek Zieba wears his inspirations on his sleeve: “Each level gives us a different shade of survival horror: ‘Oh, this is more like Resi 2 [remake]. This is more like Dead Space. This is more like Dark Souls’.” But Bloober has built on those foundations with new ideas, including chargeable guns, travel through time, and monsters that can merge with corpses to grow more powerful.
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Cronos: The New Dawn leads an issue that travels all over Europe. In Paris we find Sifu developer Sloclap working on Rematch, an unexpected pivot into football that retains the studio’s thirdperson action chops. This month we also talk to Malmö’s Frictional Games to discover the story behind the creation of Amnesia: The Bunker, and drop in to Milan’s Santa Ragione, creator of games such as Fotonica and Saturnalia. Our previews of forthcoming games range from Finland, where Remedy is making Control spinoff FBC: Firebreak, to Spain, where Mercury Steam is applying its experience from the Metroid and Castlevania series to its next production, Blades Of Fire, and Blasphemous studio The Game Kitchen is updating an 8bit favourite in Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound.
Speaking of ninjas, Ubisoft finally takes us to a place we’ve longed dreamed of visiting in its flagship series, with the feudal Japan-set Assassin’s Creed: Shadows – you’ll find our verdict here, alongside reviews of games including South Of Midnight and Blue Prince. The latter is currently tracking as the best rated game of 2025. Do we agree? Find out in the pages of Edge 410, on sale from UK retailers now and online here.
