The Silent Hill 2 remake dev’s new horror game is a time-travelling jaunt through apocalyptic Eastern Europe

Go to the past to help your time in the future to return to the past

Image credit: Bloober Team SA

Bloober Team have announced their next horror game at last night’s Xbox Partner Preview showcase. It’s called Cronos: The New Dawn and it’s about – bear with me here – going to the past, harvesting souls, then going to the future so they can help you. It’s all because you are, um, wanting to find a special rift in the future, so you can go back to a special version of the past. I think. Anyway yeah, it looks kinda fine to good.

Cronos is set in a “grim world”, based on Eastern European brutalism and mixed with some “retro-futurist technology”. From the looks of the trailer, you play as the Commando from Risk Of Rain, who’s seemingly joined the Collective, a time-hopping organisation that wants to plumb the future for ways to return to “1980s era Poland”.

Cronos: The New Dawn – Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer | Xbox Partner Preview October 2024

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Now, parts of the game take place in the past, which is undergoing The Change: a cataclysmic event of some description. And when you pop into the future, you’ll see its results, having created a world ravaged by horrible, skittering demons.

In the trailer, you see Commando play speed chess with an old lady, before the Commando goes Edward Scissorhands and, presumably, harvests her brain. This is because you’ll need to bring people from the past into the future to help you discover these rifts and survive, although we don’t know much more. Otherwise, most surviving and surveying looks to be done with your trusty sidearm, from a typically over-the-shoulder Resi perspective.

And that’s your lot. I will say that off rip, Cronos gives me proper double A energy and I think that’s a good thing. It has the sort of name that immediately conjures up a 7/10, where it’ll be a bit janky but have some interesting ideas and a fun gimmick.

You can find the game over on Steam and it’s due out sometime next year. Also, it isn’t affiliated with Chronos From The Ashes, a middling Soulslike I reviewed not long after I joined RPS and has such a similar name that I keep getting them muddled in my noggin.