I see monstrous enemies puking green like they're in Dead Space, collapsed sidewalks and dirty toilet bowls that remind me of Silent Hill in Cronos: The New Dawn – the first original title from Bloober Team since it released the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024 – which its devs tell me showcases its heroes as much as it wants to outgrow them.
Cronos is a "love letter to survival horror," says director Jacek Zięba during my recent two-hour hands-on with the clammy science fiction game. As such, its visuals, atmosphere, and level design all happily reference "a little bit of Death Stranding, Nier: Automata, Bloodborne," says Zięba, plus Resident Evil, which is "perfect survival horror, in a way. It's a perfect blueprint." In Cronos' night fog and diseased version of '80s Poland, Bloober will try to put it to good use.
"We have created a strange combination," Zięba continues, "so you can feel, 'Oh, this is more like Silent Hill. More like Dead Space. Oh, now I'm on the more Resident Evil level. But the merge system is something that flips the table and changes everything you know."
In my own time playing Cronos, I learn by nearly falling out of my chair that the slimy hunks of muscle and stringy "Biomass" that form the game's enemies can slurp each other up off the ground, combining into more powerful, rotten creatures.
This is the "merge system," which requires you move fast, manage resources efficiently, and burn corpses as cheerfully as you would a scented candle.
"This is in our genome," says lead writer Grzegorz Like, "the psychological horror."
He explains that "as a writer, I was like, 'OK, if this is more like Resident Evil, what if – because I love the stories in [Resident Evil games], but they're more adventure-oriented – what if we get deeper, maybe?"
"Not to offend, of course," Like adds before Leon Kennedy can bust through the wall with his rocket launcher. But what would it be like to take the viruses, the marksmanship, the nationalism from the Resident Evil franchise and make it less campy, "more serious"?
"Thus, the new cocktail happened," Like concludes.
