Cronos: The New Dawn... Time, Terror + Survival
Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team’s audacious step into a new survival horror chapter. A third-person experience built around tension, loss, and... the weight of time. According to Bloober’s team, it’s “a brutal third-person survival horror where you fight for the future by salvaging the past. Burn monsters before they merge. Extract souls from the living. Adapt or die.”
In this world, you don’t just combat monsters... you must prevent them from evolving. Leave their remains behind, and they can merge into more dangerous versions. Use your Harvester to extract Essences from key figures in the past, but... carry too much, and your own mind begins to fray.
Bloober sets up a Dual Timeline
A future wasteland crawling with horrifying abominations.
1980s Poland / Nowa Huta, when humanity teetered on the edge of collapse.
The Traveler (you) is an agent of the enigmatic Collective, diving between those eras to stop The Change that shattered civilization.
Bloober describes the visual style as “Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology,” giving you concrete monoliths, cold industrial zones, neon accents, and shattered architecture.
Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team’s bold statement: a survival horror that demands urgency, and punishes hesitation. Coming across a game save station allows you to take a deep breath, especially if you've gone through it and need take five. Whether you’re burning bodies to halt merging, balancing Essences against your sanity, or navigating the shifting realities of past and future... this is a game about effort, fear, and consequence.
As you dive into the past, you’ll extract Essences from selected people who died during The Change. These offer powerful bonuses in the future... but they come with a haunting cost. The more Essences you carry, the more your suit and mind are haunted by whispers, visual flickers, and creeping disorientation. It’s a deliberate trade-off between strength and sanity. To extract or stay mentally intact?
Strongly consider tweaking your aiming sensitivity early to fit your comfort level, incinerate fast, and don’t let dread paralyze you. If you’re a Resident Evil veteran chasing that same tension, Cronos delivers... with a fresh coat of time-warped horror.
Burn or FAFO: The Core Threat
Killing monsters isn’t enough. If you don’t incinerate their remains quickly, other creatures can absorb them... “merging” into faster, tougher hybrids. That mechanic forces urgency and fear. After every encounter, you have to act swiftly or risk... finding out what the escalation has formed into.
Tip to incinerate effectively:
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Carry a reliable flame weapon or fuel source (flamethrower, incendiary rounds, fuel grenades).
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After dispatching an enemy, immediately switch to your incineration tool before scanning or looting. Delay is dangerous.
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In tight areas, back away while burning to avoid getting surrounded.
Tip to remove a sluggish experience:
Bloober seems to tune the default sensitivity deliberately low to build dread. I wasn't comfortable with that at all. If you feel hindered when neutralizing threats, here’s what to do:
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Pause → Settings / Controls / Camera / Sensitivity
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Increase Look Sensitivity to a comfortable level (for X & Y) | Mine is 0.90
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Raise Aim Sensitivity to a comfortable level (for X & Y) | Mine is 0.90
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Test in a safe area — you want responsiveness without making fine aiming impossible.
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Adjust gradually until you find a sweet spot: sharper turning but still steady enough for precise shots.
A more responsive camera can mean you spot threats sooner, pivot faster under pressure, or dodge attacks before they land.
Why Resident Evil Fans Should Sit Up & Take Notice
If you’ve loved Resident Evil across its evolution, Cronos offers a haunting echo — and its own innovations. Even the dev team called it a treat with Resident Evil-style action. Burning the Orphans totally reminded me of the Resident Evil remake on the Gamecube. As seen in the gameplay... you get:
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Tight resource management & tension: Just like classic RE, you’ll constantly juggle ammo, healing items, and gear. You’re rarely overpowered.
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Over-the-shoulder / third-person framing: Cronos favors camera angles that keep you close to your character, intensifying surprise and horror.
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Mutation & escalation threat: The merge mechanic is a fresh twist on mutated bosses or evolving threats in later RE games. A corpse unattended here might become your nightmare later.
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Environmental storytelling: Bloober leaves narrative breadcrumbs — torn notes, altered rooms, fragmented scenes — much like RE’s abandoned mansions and hidden files.
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Horror in constricted spaces: Many zones favor narrow hallways, twisting corners, and dark rooms — classic RE tension zones, but drenched in Bloober’s aesthetics.
