Cronos: The New Dawn, the upcoming sci-fi survival horror game from Bloober Team, the developers behind 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake and the Layers of Fear series, has been showing off more and more of its twisted and grisly gameplay since it was announced late last year. Today, the developers shared a new trailer, a deep dive into Cronos: The New Dawn’s combat.
You can watch the Cronos: The New Dawn Combat Deep Dive trailer below, or on the official YouTube channel.
The trailer has Game Director Jacek ZiÄ™ba and Lead Combat Designer Shamil Yanbukhtin answer a few questions about Cronos: The New Dawn’s combat, from its enemy variety to how it handles item management.
The team opted for a more “handcrafted” approach to combat scenarios, referred to as arenas, in hopes of creating a more tactical experience for players. “There is no one solution to clear out arenas,” says Zieba, “It all depends on your loadout, your gameplay style, and how you want to approach it, and how many resources you have. There’s a lot of variability there.”
When it comes to item management, it’s all up to the player how they choose to proceed with each encounter. Yanbukhtin sums it up: “We are giving you different types of weapons, tools, abilities, and throughout the game, you have to figure out what works best, by yourself.” During the trailer, we see the player being able to purchase resources, as well as craft them from ingredients. But all items are crafted using the same ingredients, so players will need to be wary of how they choose to spend them.
The developers confirmed that there are progression systems in Cronos: The New Dawn, and it looks like players will be able to upgrade a range of weapons as well as the Traveler’s suite, called a Temporal Shell. It seems that the main currency in Cronos is called Energy, which is used to purchase items as well as upgrades, with a second currency called Cores.
Much of what we got to see up till now is what many survival horror fans will be well acquainted with, but where things get really interesting is when the devs start talking about Cronos: The New Dawn’s enemies. Using a blend of specific roles with the game’s Merge system, Bloober Team wants players to think before they shoot.
“So we built different types of roles for them,” explains Yanbukhtin, “Imagine a role of a runner whose goal is to run to the player and kill them as fast as they can. Then there is a ranger character who stands behind and shoots at you, forcing you to get closer to them. There are bruisers. There are big tanky guys who soak up a lot of your resources. We created a lot of unique encounters in the game, and we want you to think about which target would be the best to start with.”
These roles may seem standard to many, but it’s Cronos: The New Dawn’s Merge system that adds depth to the enemy variety and combat encounters. “When a merge happens,” says ZiÄ™ba, “your running enemy can become a tank enemy, and even a ranged attack as well, or other attacks, and just become stronger and stronger if you let them merge.” The developers briefly mentioned boss encounters, but quickly moved on, no doubt leaving that sort of information for a future reveal.
Toward the end of the trailer, the devs rattled off several other interesting tidbits, including story details, like the fact that all Travelers have the same job of jumping back to the past to extract targets, but that their target lists will be different. Players will also be able to find an upgrade for the weapon-mounted scanner that lets them see the health of enemies.
Oh, and there is a stomp. “With a heavy sound!“
Those are the main points to take away from the Cronos: The New Dawn Combat Deep Dive trailer, with more updates promised in the future. For readers who would like to see more of the game, the developers released a dev diary talking about the World of Cronos: The New Dawn, and shared concept art of environments, enemies, and character designs.
If there is one thing that players looking forward to Cronos: The New Dawn will want to remember, it’s this: Don’t let them merge. Or as Game Director Jacek ZiÄ™ba puts it, “You will suffer.”
Cronos: The New Dawn is scheduled to release in Fall 2025 and is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles.
How do you think of Cronos: The New Dawn’s combat looks? Let us know in the comments below.
