[FEATURE] Hands On Preview With Cronos: The New Dawn – Such Is Our Calling
Deep in the heart of Poland, in the depths of a secret studio, in a strangely preserved area of communist Krakow, Bloober Team are creating monsters. We sent Finger Guns traveller Toby Andersen back in time to investigate and report back. The transcript below is the sole surviving remnant from Toby’s experiences in Poland and his hands-on impressions of his time with Cronos: The New Dawn. He no longer speaks of his journey; muttering and letting out the occasional shriek, we fear his mind is broken. The only thing he says with any regularity, wide-eyed and manic; Don’t Let Them Merge.
KRAKOW, POLAND
TOWA HUTA CITY
10/07/2025 – EXACT TIME UNKNOWN
‘CRONOS: THE NEW DAWN’
As I approached Krakow by air, under a ceiling of ominous cloud and a deluge of rain, my thoughts turned to the monstrosities down below. Turbulence was to be expected considering our purpose here. The other travellers and I, all nameless to one another, were summoned by the Collective, envoys willing to set hands to Dualsense and plunge headlong into Cronos: The New Dawn. We had but one remit, to witness firsthand the horrors that Bloober Team had created and send word back to our waiting readers. We had no idea what we had agreed to.
The plane touched down, and the heavens opened, seemingly a sign of things to come. As the day began, I was collected from my lodgings by a genuine 1980s Polish bus, and to complete the strange turn toward the past, transported to the communist era Nowa Huta Steelworks in the east of the city. As we travelled, I felt time folding in on itself, veering back through the decades. Much of the Steelworks remains as it was when built following World War II, preserved and now used as the location for a video game armageddon.
“Don’t Let Them Merge, they said.“
Cronos: The New Dawn is to release later in this year of our lord 2025, and Krakow’s Steelworks is to feature heavily within the game itself. Much of the plot of the final game involves travelling back through time as the Traveller, and locating individuals earmarked for extraction before they perish in whatever, as yet unknown, calamity befell our world.
The other envoys and I gathered in a central room, where decades before communist leaders in Krakow would have been about the business of churning out more steel than almost anywhere else in Europe. We were given our mission with smiles before the serious business of a harrowing session on Bloober’s new survival horror began. Don’t Let Them Merge, they said.
For two hours we played, like automatons transfixed to our screens. Wearing the spherical helmet of the Traveller, I was sent back in time, landing a pod in a strange, blighted world based on 1980s Krakow, but in the throes of a world-altering event. I got my bearings, listened to tutorials on how to use my transforming sidearm, and proceeded through my mission.
The opening of the game concerns tracking down first, what has happened to the previous traveller sent to this point in time, and when said corpse is found, carrying out the mission they had failed; to extract an individual we assume important to the Collective. As one might expect, little of the story was revealed in the first two hours of a 16 to 20-hour campaign.
I marvelled at the atmosphere of the game, its dark foreboding locales, destroyed environs, and its twisting levels. Each area had multiple secrets, routes, and shortcuts to discover. The Traveller I controlled was slower than I might have liked, clad in so much protective crono-armour as they are. They could at least stomp with some gusto. The suit is something incredible, memorable, with a design, especially about the faceplate and helmet, one is not likely to forget in a hurry. That strange central delineation and mouthpart, the rivets on the dome; it is sure to become iconic.
Gameplay followed closely the format established in survival horror titles over the years, from Silent Hill to Resident Evil; search each area for supplies and ammunition, encounter locked doors and secret areas, and keep exploring until you locate the keys or clues you need to progress. Cronos: The New Dawn does not break new ground in this regard, feeling possibly too familiar.
“Deep in the heart of Poland, in the depths of a secret studio, in a strangely preserved area of communist Krakow, Bloober Team are creating monsters.“
Before long, however, I encountered the creatures I had been warned about. Lumbering, shuffling corpse-like shells, each enemy would approach in jerking fits and starts, luring you into false movement. Many had elongating tentacle arms that they used with accuracy to bludgeon and attack me. My sidearm had very little ammunition, forcing me to take extremely careful shots. Even charging each shot, a mechanic I felt worked exceptionally well, often was not enough to fell these shambling monsters.
Resources were scarce, almost comically scarce. Even using the crafting mechanic on the pause menu, I ran out fast. It felt far too easy to run out, even charging every shot, even making a marksman’s use of headshots.
And that was before the first instance of the merge. Cronos is no copycat: Dead Space had dismemberment, Cronos has The Merge. Each enemy you leave on the ground in your onward efforts is but fodder to the next enemy. I watched, often helpless, as another enemy would appear and lumber over to a corpse, unfold whatever sick manner of tentacles it had, and absorb its brethren, becoming stronger, spikier, and more ferocious. Often, my only recourse was to flee.
The correct way to prevent each enemy from becoming progressively harder to deal with was to burn the corpses as I went. I had a single, but replenishable cartridge of flame that could be used for this purpose. All gamers are aware of the ubiquitous red canister and its meaning; in Cronos: The New Dawn, red exploding canisters have even greater significance, essential for surviving bosses or groups of enemies.
There was a welcome tactical element to combat – either luring enemies away from other corpses, or working through your enemies with a methodical intent to burn them all. Cronos: The New Dawn is likely to become synonymous with red canisters in a way no game quite has before.
A well-crafted and nostalgic soundtrack interspersed these combat encounters; sweeping and pulsing synths reminiscent of John Carpenter and other iconic 1980s horror scores. I thoroughly enjoyed the music, finding it just the right level of atmospheric and tension-building to make me sweat, and giving the game a tone that sung to my nostalgic heart.
Too soon, my time with the game was over, culminating in a pulse-pounding climb through a soviet tenement block in search of my extraction target, while being relentlessly stalked by a black, shadowy creature made almost entirely of tentacles. As was to be expected, as I reached the floor and room I needed to finish my mission, the creature attacked, and so ensued a vicious and tense battle through an apartment being ripped apart by time itself.
The method to defeat the creature was clear: shoot weak points that appeared within the tentacles. But the creature needed to be burning to reveal said weak points. I had only a small supply of my own flame cartridges, and had to rely on canisters strewn about the room. This was not a Resident Evil battle where I would be suddenly gifted enough ammunition. This was a test of accuracy, charged shots, and my ability to stay alive even in close confines and with armour-slowed movement. I strayed incredibly close to running out every last bullet I had gathered until that point.
“Cronos is no copycat: Dead Space had dismemberment, Cronos has The Merge.“
With the Travellers all wearing that same suit, and being conveniently identical, it felt like a strong scenario for a roguelike, in the vein of Returnal. And extracting targets, if combined with resources, had the makings of an extraction shooter. But Cronos is played a lot straighter than that. It’s a linear survival horror adventure even if levels task you with dropping in like those who came before and extracting important individuals.
In an era of cookie-cutter, procedural games, and AAA titles that can feel identical, Cronos: The New Dawn knows the genre it wants to target, and it doesn’t stray dramatically from ground trodden by Dead Space and Silent Hill. It knows what it is, but it still establishes a unique identity; I’ve forgotten the last time a game had this much original and effective marketing. The Traveller’s suit, the fonts, the colour scheme; the hashtags ‘Don’t Let Them Merge’, and ‘Such Is Our Calling’ are clever, witty, and original, sounding like hashtags from the height of communism but in the age of social media.
When my time with the game ended, I stumbled back to my lodgings, expected to just carry on with my life after what I’d just seen. It seemed to me that after the success enjoyed in the wake of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team had succeeded triumphantly in capitalising on positive sentiment by delivering their own high-quality IP, so hot on the heels of their last game, and upping the quality of their output. I could feel Cronos: The New Dawn was set to dominate the fall horror release schedule in the year of our lord 2025, and perhaps beyond.
Eventually, the two parts of my journey, my time with the game and Krakow, Krakow and the game, merged into one seamless mass of memory and experience and flesh and horror. My mind broke. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was falsehood. I couldn’t be sure of when I was, let alone where I was. Don’t Let Them Merge, they said. I should have heeded that warning.
I can hear them shambling in the corridors outside the room where I must quickly end this missive. When one stops, I know for certain it is absorbing its brethren, becoming stronger, and when its lumbering continues, surely coming for me. Should they take me and merge my flesh, find the Collective, tell them where I was in time. Tell them dawn breaks and Bloober’s new survival horror, Cronos: The New Dawn releases Fall 2025. Such Is Our Calling.
TRANSMISSION ENDS. VIDEO EVIDENCE FOLLOWS.
So ends the transcript of Toby Andersen’s time with Cronos: The New Dawn. We fear for our colleague’s sanity and must anxiously hope that, given time, perhaps when the game releases in Fall 2025, he will be able to play the rest of the game and achieve the catharsis he so desperately needs.
Cronos: The New Dawn is currently slated for a Fall 2025 release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One.
Disclaimer: In order to complete this preview, we played a promotional build of the game.
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