The New Dawn Is So Much More Than A Sci-Fi Silent Hill

Cronos: The New Dawn is a survival horror recreation from Bloober Group that delivers extra action-packed scares than ever earlier than. It maintains numerous the identical storytelling DNA as earlier titles from the group, comparable to The Medium, however with a extra sci-fi slant, taking gamers by time itself because the Traveler, following an apocalyptic occasion known as The Change. Gamers will manipulate time rifts and alter the setting as they journey by a hostile, brutalist world stuffed with monsters that may merge with each other to turn out to be stronger.

I ought to start this preview by saying I’m not sometimes a horror recreation participant – my protection usually falls extra within the realm of Sims 4 fairies or cozy Animal Crossing builds. Nonetheless, I do benefit from the ideas of horror, and now and again I come throughout one thing so uniquely creepy I’m capable of shove down my fears and benefit from the expertise – even when I die endlessly. Cronos: The New Daybreak was completely certainly one of these cases for me, leaving me nonetheless fascinated by my time in its world and with its monsters over every week later.

Combatting Cronos’ Combining Monsters

To Burn, Or Not To Burn, That Is The Query

The creatures of Cronos are known as Orphans, and are available a couple of totally different horrifying flavors: some headless, long-limbed lots of flesh, others fortunate sufficient to have a head are largely gaping maws or adorned on each facet with additional arms. It’s all an actual tour de drive of the disgusting, and I imply that in a really complimentary means. After all, this solely additional compounds when monsters are capable of merge, which I allowed an embarrassing variety of instances in my playthrough, taking over new expertise and swelling in dimension.

In my protection, numerous this merging was all the time inevitable. The game employs a Resident Evil-esque stock and useful resource administration system, limiting gamers to carrying just one flamethrower gasoline at a time. This makes fight a bit like a fast-paced puzzle, particularly when considering environmental elements: I might burn our bodies instantly, or I might lure extra monsters down the identical hallway and shoot flammable canisters to interrupt their merging, utilizing my few shotgun shells towards any stragglers who stay.

Even smaller bits of fight felt strategically layered. Typically I’d get fortunate, solely encountering one or two monstrosities at a time that might simply be taken down, however due to the character of the sport, I might by no means be actually certain that it was it. Ought to I you’ll want to burn the our bodies in case extra Orphans lurch out in a couple of paces, or would that be a waste of gasoline? Time rift manipulations, which do issues like clear paths or kind bridges when activated, additionally pose dilemmas – typically, shifting ahead additionally means awakening enemies.

There are a number of methods gamers can barely enhance their probabilities, with varied upgrades out there at workstations sporadically positioned around the globe. The go well with will be improved when it comes to its integrity and stock slots, and weapons can have options comparable to their clip dimension or enhanced energy. Nonetheless, relying on how enemies merge and what traits they soak up, gamers could have to make use of a mix of melee, weapons, and flames to make it out alive.

The Story Of Cronos: The New Daybreak

A Traveler Alone In A Brutalist World

The position of the Traveler is straightforward, not less than in concept: take over for the earlier Traveler, journeying by time rifts to extract the Essences of vital folks left behind in The Change. It’s clear there’s nonetheless quite a bit to find out about what occurred to the world: I don’t know precisely what The Change was, what it has to do with the malformed lots of monsters, or why the Essences are vital. By far, although, I used to be left with probably the most questions concerning the Traveler herself.

As a faceless entity inside a steel go well with, The Traveler was fairly an enigma to me throughout my time with the sport, and that’s very purposeful. My introduction to her was moments after she’d been woke up, slated to take over for the earlier Traveler, the place she was being given a phrase affiliation take a look at that she answered very robotically. Throughout my interview with the Cronos team, they shared with me how they took a giant threat with a most important character who initially comes throughout as feeling very chilly and indifferent.

Over time, she’s slated to bear a giant evolution, although the group has been largely secretive about what that entails. “Make her chilly {and professional} after which break her,” is how lead author Grzegorz Like describes the Traveler’s journey. The sport’s Steam web page hints at the truth that the extraction of Essences from folks gathered all through the story will make the go well with more and more “haunted,” which possible contributes to this, however I believe different elements are at play as nicely.

Impressed by Nineteen Eighties Poland, the panorama is filled with harsh, brutalist structure that completely units the tone. The world as an entire is stuffed with environmental storytelling: indicators, graffiti, and different Polish postings are routinely translated, and there are various different issues to seek out mendacity round, like diary entries and previous recordings that give a window into the times main as much as what was – roughly – the top of the world. It’s concurrently desolate and full of little particulars that make strolling by it really feel like slowly unraveling a thriller.

Cronos: The New Daybreak’s Horror Strategy

Gamers Are Their Personal Worst Enemy

The environments aren’t simply filled with lore – removed from it. One of the prevalent options is big conglomerations of deformed monster our bodies, typically full with full partitions of horrifying limbs and pores and skin webbing, which the sport refers to as Biomass. You by no means know once you cross by certainly one of these grotesque lumps of flesh whether or not it’ll out of the blue beginning a monster or not – the sport doesn’t overuse that aspect of shock, however it was all the time behind my thoughts as a chance.

This idea, typically, is without doubt one of the greatest pillars of Cronos’ scares, with recreation director Jacek Zięba saying, “We’re nonetheless leaning into extra environment and tone and general dread. What occurs in your thoughts and the worry of the unknown is most vital.” In a few of my first bits of exploration, strolling by previous residences and places of work, I noticed shadows in different rooms that my thoughts made into monsters, solely to disclose upon entry that they have been merely mannequins.

In one other occasion, I used to be given a small glimpse of a monster by a window, however there was no solution to assault it but – I simply needed to proceed exploring, figuring out they have been slowly closing in on me. It’s wonderful how Cronos cultivates this general oeuvre, between its gradual swells of music, background noises of mysterious origins, squelchy partitions of flesh, and an underlying sense of dread that comes from environment filled with the remnants of a once-functioning society.

Cronos: The New Daybreak Has Enraptured Me

A Narrative I am Inclined To Comply with Regardless of My Cowardice

Due to the sci-fi slant, Cronos is “much less psychological and extra philosophical horror” in response to Zięba. It is a aspect of the sport I discovered very attention-grabbing, and after they later talked about the Hedgehog’s Dilemma – a philosophical drawback initially posited by Arthur Schopenhauer about how we harm those we want closest to us – I considered how I’d discovered in-game notes lamenting about an lack of ability to be with household throughout a lethal pandemic. Did people’ intuition for intimacy additionally sow their downfall? May it have even prompted the lots of conjoined our bodies?

I used to be left with extra questions than solutions after my hands-on, which is exactly the intent. There have been small drip-feeds of lore in every single place, comparable to frequent mentions of the mysterious illness and the way, concerning its victims, “you’ll know them by their eyes,” which made me wish to proceed exploring the world regardless of each fear-based intuition in my physique telling me in any other case. I ought to point out that the world is just not solely bereft of mirth – one brilliant spot is the cats discovered all through the sport, which carry gamers items.

On a private stage, I discover it extremely refreshing for a sci-fi horror game to have a non-space setting. I additionally haven’t been capable of get the picture of among the in-game monsters out of my thoughts – the way in which a few of them slithered throughout the ground and absorbed one other to turn out to be much more grotesque was actually haunting in one of the best ways. Cronos: The New Daybreak is so compelling that, towards all my want for self-preservation, I’ve no alternative however to maintain it in my sights forward of its launch later this 12 months.

Cronos: The New Daybreak

Methods

Launched

2025

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ // Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Robust Language

Developer(s)

Bloober Group

Writer(s)

Bloober Group

Engine

Unreal Engine

Variety of Gamers

1