Cronos: The New Dawn Preview – A Time-Twisting Survival Horror Odyssey

Today we're diving into Cronos: The New Dawn, an upcoming survival horror game from Bloober Team, set to release on September 5th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Fresh off their acclaimed Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team is delivering a pulse-pounding, third-person sci-fi horror experience that blends time travel, nightmarish creatures, and tactical combat. While I'm not normally a horror game player, Cronos has impressed me ever since its reveal in the Switch 2 partner direct a few months ago. The time-travel angle is interesting, and it has a very Dead Space feel to the movement and combat that I enjoy. Let's dive in and see what else there is to see here.

A Tale Across Time

Cronos: The New Dawn casts you as the Traveler, an agent of the Collective, tasked with navigating a post-apocalyptic wasteland and traveling back to 1980s Poland to extract the Essences of key figures lost to “The Change,” a cataclysmic event that turned humans into monstrous “Orphans.” The story straddles a grim future and a retrofuturistic past, inspired by Kraków’s brutalist architecture and films like 12 Monkeys and The Thing. Early impressions suggest a mysterious, narrative-driven experience, with cryptic elements like a Rorschach test at the start hinting at psychological depth. The plot’s focus on time rifts promises interesting puzzle-solving, and combined with the nightmarish monsters it looks like an intriguing horror focused story wrapped in a sci-fi metal suit.

Tense, Tactical Gameplay

Gameplay in Cronos will be familiar to survival-horror players. Played from a third-person perspective, you’ll be able to wield melee weapons found in the world as well as firearms like shotguns and a morphing handgun. The standout combat feature is the merge system: defeated Orphans must be burned with fire to prevent their corpses from merging with living enemies, creating tougher, deadlier versions. This feels like a great callback to the Resident Evil remake on GameCube, which would bring back any zombies you didn't burn as more aggressive red heads later in the game. In Cronos, this forces strategic combat decisions, putting you at risk of overwhelming odds later in a level if you don't clean up your mess earlier on.

Time manipulation puzzles, like rewinding to restore broken bridges, add an interesting twist, while inventory management and resource scarcity keep tension high. Movement feels slow and deliberate, much like Dead Space, and I'm sure we'll all be trying to turn around in time to fight off the enemy at our backs more than once. You can get a feel for some of the gameplay and story in the trailer embedded below.

A Visually Striking World

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Cronos delivers a chilling atmosphere with detailed environments, from crumbling 1980s apartment blocks to fleshy, body-horror caverns. The retrofuturistic setting, blending Eastern European brutalism with sci-fi tech, evokes Alien and the Metro series. The world feels oppressive yet familiar, grounding the horror in real-world-inspired locales like Poland’s Nowa Huta district. The Traveler’s muffled voice and domed helmet add some mystery, especially with the glimpse of other Travelers shown in the trailer. Are they different characters, or just us from a different timeline?

Final Thoughts

Cronos: The New Dawn feels like Bloober Team swinging for the fences, and trying to kickstart a new survival horror series using their own IP. That alone is enough reason to check this one out, but coupled with the interesting time travel elements, striking visuals, and exciting combat tweaks, this looks like a game every survival horror player should take a look at. Thankfully we won't have to wait long, Cronos launches on September 5th for all current-gen systems and we'll have a review round-up for it not long after release to see what the consensus is.

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