| Cronos: The New Dawn | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Bloober Team |
| Publisher(s) | Bloober Team |
| Director(s) | Jacek Zięba Wojciech Piejko |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5 |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | 5 September 2025 |
| Genre(s) | Survival horror |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Cronos: The New Dawn is an upcoming 2025 survival horror game developed and published by Bloober Team. It is scheduled to release for PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and macOS [1] on 5 September 2025.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a survival horror game played from a third-person perspective. The Traveler can use both melee abilities and a variety of firearms such as pistols and shotguns to defeat enemies. If defeated enemies are not properly disposed of using fire, a surviving enemy will merge with the undead corpses, creating a hardened, more difficult version of the same enemy. [2]
Cronos: The New Dawn follows the Traveler, who works as an agent for an enigmatic organization known as the Collective. The Traveler must survive a futuristic wasteland and travel back in time to Poland in the 1980s to extract selected people who did not survive the Change, a cataclysmic event that turned humans into monsters known as "Orphans". [3] [4]
Traveler ND-3476 is awoken from hibernation and tasked with finding to location of her deceased Predecessor ND-3500 and continuing his mission. She ventures into a ruined city infested with Orphan monsters and finds ND-3500's corpse, discovering his objective was to search for an individual named Edward Wiśniewski. The Traveler initiates a Dive to travel back in time to the point Edward was still alive and extracts his Essence so it can be uploaded to the Collective through "Ascendance". During the Ascendance process, Edward's consciousness reveals he is convinced the Change was caused by government experimentation, and learned the truth about it from his friend Artur Baryka. However, the Ascendance Terminal suddenly malfunctions, nearly killing the Traveler. The Warden then arrives to repair the Terminal, and the Traveler is assigned a mission to collect Artur's Essence.
The Traveler heads to the Steelworks and initiates another Dive, and encounters Dr. Weronika Kamiński, who came to the Steelworks with Artur to search for his brother Gabriel. Weronika flees, and the Traveler corners Artur in the foreman's office with an infected Gabriel, who is undergoing mutation into an Orphan. Artur blames the Traveler for causing the Change by bringing the disease from the future, and claims that Gabriel had met a Traveler before. Despite being confused by the accusations, the Traveler proceeds with harvesting Artur's Essence. Uploading Artur's Essence to the Terminal, the Traveler converses with his consciousness and he reveals that a Traveler was captured by the military in the past who was examined by Dr. Dawid Zybert, and the Change occurred shortly after the appearance of the previous Traveler. The Traveler sets Zybert to be her next target and sets out for the hospital. Diving to the past, the Traveler encounters Weronika again and finds Zybert having been turned into an Orphan. She extracts Zybert's Essence anyways, and Weronika reveals the Traveler they captured, the "Pathfinder", was originally supposed to extract her essence but ultimately decided not to.
Upon returning, the Traveler begins suffering negative effects from containing so many Essences inside her for too long. She contacts Zybert's Essence, who reveals he hid the Pathfinder away in a remote abbey overseen by his daughter Eliza to protect him from a military execution order. The Warden then mentions the Pathfinder is a special type of Traveler with a greater understanding of their technology, which means he may know the means to fully repair the Terminal so the Traveler can remove the Essences she is carrying. The Traveler heads for the Abbey and defeats Eliza, who had become an Orphan, but finds the Pathfinder is already dead. However, the Pathfinder left behind a message revealing he had lost faith in the Collective and Vocation, and did his best to sabotage their efforts extract Weronika's Essence. With no other choice, the Traveler carries the Pathfider's corpse back to the Terminal, and enters the Warden's workshop where she finds Weronika's corpse just as the Warden returns.
The Traveler finds out to her horror that she herself is the result of the Pathfinder transferring Weronika's Essence into a Traveler body. The Warden himself is actually the Pathfinder, who transferred his consciousness into a different body to stay hidden from the Collective. Furious that the Traveler hasn't developed into a perfect copy of Weronika like he hoped, the Pathfinder transfers himself back into his original body and travels back in time to repeat his experiment. The Traveler follows and battles the Pathfinder, ultimately defeat him. Weronika then tries to intervene, stating she wants to help the Pathfinder try to find a way to save humanity. The Traveler then must choose to kill or spare the Pathfinder:
Cronos: The New Dawn is currently being developed by Bloober Team. Development of the game began in late 2021, with the team working on The Medium being assigned to work on Cronos. Bloober Team chose to make a science fiction horror game because they were also working on a remake of Silent Hill 2, which featured more grounded themes. The game features a retrofuturistic setting, with the team comparing it to Alien and the older Star Wars films. "New Dawn" is the starting gameplay area in Cronos, and its design was inspired by Kraków during the communist rule in the 1980s. [5] The setting was based on brutalist architecture. [6] The team was inspired by a number of films and television series, such as 12 Monkeys , Dark , and Annihilation . [7] Body horror inspired the game's enemy design, and The Thing was cited by the team as a source of inspiration. [8] The team considered Cronos as a narrative-driven game, one that tells "an intimate story about people and characters". [7]
Following the release of The Medium, the studio wanted to pursue a larger project and move on from making adventure games to something more gameplay-focused. [9] In 2023, Bloober Team's co-founder, Piotr Babieno, announced that the studio will stop making psychological horror games and transition to making "mass-market horror" games. [10] Gameplay wise, the game was inspired by Dead Space and Alan Wake , both of which feature unique combat mechanics which encourage players to be strategic while fighting against enemies. [11] Co-director Jacek Zięba added that, in terms of gameplay, the game was "more Resident Evil and less Silent Hill ". [5]
Private Division was originally set to publish Cronos: The New Dawn, though it dropped out of the deal in May 2024. [12] [13] In October 2024, the game was officially announced by Bloober Team, which will self-publish the game for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S in 2025. [14] In June 2025, it was announced that Skybound Games would distribute the PlayStation 5 physical edition in North and South America. [15] In Europe, the Middle East, and Australia PlayStation 5 and Windows physical editions will be distributed by Bandai Namco Europe Entertainment S.A.S. [16] The game's release date was announced alongside a Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game during the July 2025 Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase presentation, with the Switch 2 version set for release alongside the other platforms. [17]
Cronos: The New Dawn is scheduled to release for macOS, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 5 September 2025. [18] [19]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | (PC) 76/100 [20] (PS5) 78/100 [21] (XSXS) 80/100 [22] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Destructoid | 7/10 [23] |
| Eurogamer | 4/5 [24] |
| Game Informer | 7.75/10 [25] |
| GameSpot | 8/10 [26] |
| GamesRadar+ | 3.5/5 [27] |
| Hardcore Gamer | 4/5 [28] |
| IGN | 7/10 [29] |
| PC Gamer (US) | 58/100 [30] |
| Push Square | 8/10 [31] |
| Shacknews | 9/10 [32] |
| Video Games Chronicle | 3/5 [33] |
Cronos: The New Dawn received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. [20] [21] [22]