Polish horror specialists Bloober Team have released a 10-minute, uncut slice of gameplay from their upcoming sci-fi survival-horror Cronos: The New Dawn, giving fans their deepest look yet at the studio’s first original IP since The Medium and its Silent Hill 2 remake. The footage tours two contrasting locales—“Islands in the Mist,” an other-worldly fog-shrouded expanse, and “The Hospital,” a claustrophobic maze of warped corridors—while foregrounding a combat loop built around extreme scarcity and dread.
“Don’t let them merge”
Central to the showcase is the newly detailed Merge mechanic. Fallen enemies, known as Orphans, reanimate when their corpses are absorbed by nearby creatures, fusing into faster, deadlier abominations unless players burn the bodies first. The video caps off with a first glimpse of “Terror,” one of the game’s towering boss encounters, hinting at the psychological and body-horror tone Bloober is chasing.
Brutal by design
Speaking earlier this year, co-director Jacek Zięba underscored the studio’s commitment to a single default difficulty: “It’s hard mode, in the old-school way… One mode,” he told Polygon, adding that a tougher option may unlock after completion. The team wants every bullet—and every mistake—to matter.
A tale of two timelines
Players step into the boots of Traveler ND-3500, an operative from a ruined future who dives back to an alternate-history Poland in the early 1980s, just days before a devastating pandemic spirals out of control. Bloober cites Resident Evil, Returnal, and the TV series Dark as tonal touchstones, promising cut-scenes and audio logs that weave time-travel intrigue through the survival-horror framework.
Bloober Team — from indie beginnings to horror specialist
Founded on 6 November 2008 in Kraków by Piotr Babieno and Piotr Bielatowicz, Bloober Team has grown from about 20 staff to roughly 250 employees as of 2024.
The studio’s early catalogue was eclectic, spanning rhythm-game experiment Music Master: Chopin (2010), cross-play arena brawler Deathmatch Village (2013) and PlayStation 4 launch title Basement Crawl (2014). After Basement Crawl drew poor reviews, Bloober rebuilt the game from scratch as Brawl (2015) and issued the overhaul free to existing owners. That challenging rebuild period—first launching Basement Crawl and then re-engineering it as Brawl—crystallised the team’s decision to specialise in psychological horror.
The new focus produced a string of genre stand-outs: Layers of Fear (2016), cyber-noir thriller Observer (2017) and found-footage adaptation Blair Witch (2019). Recent milestones include the dual-reality showcase The Medium (2021) and, in partnership with Konami, the 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2, which launched to an 86 Metacritic average.
On the business side, Bloober moved from Poland’s NewConnect market to the main Warsaw Stock Exchange in January 2024, while Tencent became its largest external shareholder with a ~22 % stake acquired in 2021.
With Cronos: The New Dawn, the newly announced Silent Hill remake, and an unannounced Skybound collaboration on the horizon, Bloober Team remains a prominent force in contemporary horror development.
Release window and platforms
Cronos: The New Dawn is slated to launch Fall 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Wish-listing is live now, and Bloober hints that more diaries and showcases will follow “soon.”
