Cronos: The New Dawn is brutal pandemic horror: ‘Hard mode, in the old-school way’

New Gameplay Trailer Chronos: A New DawnOn Wednesday from Bloober Team, we will debut a tense gameplay featuring the main character (a time traveler with futuristic armor and weapons weapons). We were able to see more at the Game Developers Conference in March. There, I sat with Jacek Zięba and Wojciech Piejko, who co-direct the game with the Bloober team. And I can certainly tell you one thing: this game looks hard.

I didn’t play Chronos Self; Preview was a handoff so instead, his colleague Pieiko told me about the premise of time travel, so I was treated to watching Ziva play through the section of the game. Time hopping occurs over (at least) two different periods. There is a current period of troubled by a pandemic of horrific mutations that have transformed many humans into monsters. However, the developers were intentionally vague about the rest of the story, but cited their desire to avoid spoilers in response to almost every question about it. They want players to experience the science fiction story for themselves when the game is ready. (Chronos There is no confirmed release date yet, only the 2025 release window. )

Throughout the play session, Ziva continued to hold his breath, defeating difficult enemies after difficult enemies with the skin of his teeth. For your reference, readers, usually game developers, are very good at games, so it’s cakewalk that they play, whether the reporters are observing them or not. but Chronos We purposefully tune it to be a difficult survival experience and the developers want to keep it that way.

When asked about the simple mode, both developers shook their heads and Zięba said, “It’s hard mode in the old fashioned way.” “So, is there just one mode?” I asked. “One mode,” he confirmed. “After you’ve finished the game, you can unlock difficult difficulty levels.”

Naturally, during the conversation, Software’s game appeared as a point of comparison, but Zięba and Piejko told me Chronos There’s far more story than those games. Although we couldn’t see much of this in the preview focused on gameplay, they explained that the game has cutscenes and audio logs, revealing more about its world. The developer also cited Resident Evil Returnal As an impact, and Netflix will appear dark And movies 12 monkeys – Both time travel stories.

When Zięba and Piejko pointed out the game’s settings, Poland is Poland, which is also the developer’s native.

“We set it up in the beginning of 1980 for a variety of reasons,” Ziva said. In the early 1980s, the country was under martial law, and the same applies to Alt-History in the 1980s. Chronos – Not for the same reason. in ChronosZiba explained that martial law is enacted as “because there is a disease.” No, it’s okay, everything’s fine, just staying at home, it’s cool, it’s fine. “However, if the hero travels through time, going back in time before the pandemic became widespread, “a few days before everything was shit,” as Ziva said, they will learn more about what happened and why it happened.

But again, to see that story, players need to be very systematic and strategic during play Chronos. The latest trailer features one point in the order “don’t merge” that is splattered across the screen. It was also the number one hint that both developers told me to keep in mind when faced with the enemy of the game. Essentially, these creatures can merge together to create a larger, more powerful version. So if you see a monster approaching a nearby corpse lying on the ground, be very concerned. The more they fuse together, the more powerful the resulting creature becomes, and it takes ammunition to kill it. This is not good. Because there is very little ammunition in this game.

“The basic enemies, we call them doppelgangers,” explained Zięba. “They are probably made from two, three, four, five people, but they’re still thinking, I’m a person. So they look more human. But you can also fight monsters – they know that they are not people. They look very different from these people. ”

This “merge” mechanic was the first mechanic created for the game, and the whole game and the story came from that concept. In the early days of the in-game pandemic, it was one of the first symptoms – “People are beginning to feel the urge to be together,” Pieiko said. Eventually, that impulse turned into a horrifying merger that is currently on display in the apocalyptic timeline.

Chronos: A New Dawn Not only is it a completely original IP, it’s also a single-player experience. “That’s what it should be,” Ziba declared. “I’m tired of live service stuff, you know, catch Me – Not so Engage myself. (…) I think we’re all over-attacking, now, by the things of the live service. and How can you carry a player and how can you do it? – no! Just make a good game. ”

Blue Bar Team Chronos: A New Dawn It was released in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.