Interview: Cronos The New Dawn is Bloober Team's "love letter to sci-fi"

After the smashing success of its Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team has finally lifted the lid on its next big project, a sci-fi-themed survival horror called Cronos: The New Dawn. The developer released an impressive-looking gameplay trailer late last month, filled with terrifying vibes, fast-paced action gameplay, and our first glimpse at a horrifying new mechanic where downed enemies can be absorbed by other enemies, making them stronger and more gruesome. 

Following the release of the new gameplay trailer, we sat down with the game’s two co-directors, Wojciech Piejko and Jacek Zieba, to discuss their new game, Bloober Team’s new gameplay-oriented direction, and the mixed response to The Medium. 

Tell me in your own words: What is Cronos? 

Wojciech: Cronos is a full-fledged survival horror, and I think our dream come true because we are both very die-hard fans of survival horror, and we were super excited to finally be able to create our own survival horror game. From the heart, I will say this the game of my dreams. 

Jacek: It's our love letter to the genre, to sci-fi also in a way, and a dream come true. 

How long has the idea of Cronos been bouncing around in your heads? Was it something you’ve had in your mind for a while, or did you finish a project and decide ‘Let’s find something to do’?

Jacek: More the second one. 

Wojciech: Back in the day when we were finishing our previous project, The Medium, our boss called us and other leads of different departments – like designers, cinematic artists, all the heads were there – and we started talking about what to do next. We already knew that the second team – because we have two core development teams in Bloober –  had already started to work on the Silent Hill 2 remake project, and we also wanted to do survival horror. 

They said ‘yes, okay,’ but now we had to come up with the original idea. They divided us into two teams, we landed in different teams, and we prepared two pitches. We pitched them to each other, and we said ‘wow, that’s great in your pitch’ and ‘that’s great in yours’ and basically we merged those ideas, filled in the blanks in our imaginations, and that’s how the project Cronos was born. To be honest, those pillars are still standing. 

Jacek: We are as hyped as when we started about the project, about the idea and the potential of it. So that’s also nice. 

So you started with two pitches and merged them together, does the final product lean towards one of those pitches? 

Jacek: No, because we merged them, so there’s no more of something this or something more of that, it started to be its own new thing. It’s still similar to what we had in mind when we started the project a couple of years ago. 

Wojciech: Maybe we can try to decipher it a little bit. One of the pitches, let’s say from my team, had this suited protagonist that time travels, and Jacek’s team had this disease called The Change, which is kind of like a The Thing, [John] Carpenter’s movie, vibe, about who’s infected and stuff like that. We had the most important things. But then when we started to glue it together while working on the project, we changed directions here and there, but overall that was the fundamentals of the project. 

Jacek: There was the disease, and also to be set in the housing projects that were very popular in Poland. So we used this as our backbone, this strange disease and horror that we tried to make the idea. So when we merged it together, we now had our final idea. So I don’t think there’s something more that goes into this way or the other way. 

You’ve said that there’s more in the way of action elements compared to past Bloober games, how did you adapt to those challenges during development? 

Jacek: It’s a gameplay heavy game. That was the idea with this one, we wanted to have a different production than any previous game that we made before, and go gameplay heavy. Because we can do story, we can do cool environments, we can do scares, but in the case of gameplay, we didn’t have the chance to do it in the games we did before, in terms of scope and what we wanted to do. With this one, you can go gameplay heavy, that’s the idea, and let’s also show ourselves and also show the people that we can do it and also evolve as a company. 

In terms of challenges, it was finding the right people with whom we could do it, because we expanded our second team after The Medium. We landed great specialists now, and we’re as ready as never before to go even further with the next projects. 

Wojciech: Of course it was challenging. The most challenging part, and something that we worried the most about at the beginning, was if we’d be able to have this great gameplay. But I think, yeah, we nailed it. We also knew that the other team was making a Silent Hill 2 project, so we didn’t want to overlap with them. Our game will be quite different, so I think it leans more towards Resident Evil games with the limited inventory, more gunplay than melee fights. We’re often saying that different survival horrors are like different pizzas with different toppings and sauces. 

Jacek: So it’s still pizza, but it’s different. Also, after The Medium, building the game, two worlds at the same time, being in Poland, being in some kind of dev hell in our company… Of course, Cronos was a big step for us, and it wasn’t easy, but after The Medium, our staff were not so strong after that. 

Wojciech: Not that crazy as making a game with two worlds at the same time. 

Jacek: After that you’re prepared for a lot of things. 

Just on the topic of The Medium, you mentioned there was a little bit of dev hell during development of the game, and the reaction wasn’t entirely as positive as you’d have liked. I enjoyed it, but… 

Wojciech: Thank you. 

Jacek: We also enjoyed it. I saw the cool response and I think I even remember on the day of launch when we watched a lot of video reviews from big websites, I said ‘yeah, that’s us,’ but I also think we had a lot of good reception. I think we mostly focused on that, rather than maybe some journalists and some people don’t like the game. We knew it because that was how we built it from the get-go, we knew that it would not click with everybody. 

So what did you learn from The Medium and how did you apply that going into Cronos? 

Jacek: It’s a different game so it’s hard to tell. 

Wojciech: We can think about our road to Cronos with every game, we learned something. So starting with Layers of Fear, that was like a break for the company, we completely shifted—

Jacek: —our strategy and everything. 

Wojciech: We learned how to do horror games. Then with Observer we expanded the idea by adding dialogue choices and with Rutger Haur, a famous actor, we learned to work with the big fish. Then with The Medium, we switched the perspective. I know it was a fixed camera game, but still we switched perspective to the third person, so we completely changed our approach with the casting, for example, because they’re completely different from first-person than normal cutscenes. So I think every game taught us something that prepared us to create our first survival horror. 

You’ve also described Cronos as a more narrative-driven game, how did you go about balancing narrative and gameplay? 

Jacek: We go heavy on gameplay, but we still want to tell a meaningful story. But it’s more to be deciphered by the player this time. 

Wojciech: To begin with, the world is destroyed, you need to enter the city, jump back in time and extract people who didn’t survive the apocalypse. It sounds like a big mission. But then the game narrows down to a more intimate, more psychological story about the characters you’re extracting, who they are, what the connections are between them, who you are in this story and how you found yourself in this crazy situation. I do believe we’ve found this cool balance of having this cold open during the beginning of the game where you need to find your place in the world, discover what happened between characters, and then it becomes a more and more intimate story about people living and trapped in this time travel story. 

Jacek: I think it is possible to connect both worlds. Maybe a good example would be Sony games, like God of War, that can connect great gameplay with great story and presentation. The Last of Us, definitely the second part, in terms of gameplay, it’s gameplay heavy and how it looks is just mind blowing, but at the same time they deliver a very meaningful story. So it depends on your budget and your capabilities, and maybe sometimes you need to sacrifice something, but I don’t think we sacrificed anything. We just changed our approach just to check how it will land this time. 

Wojciech: I think there are great titles that can connect both worlds. Even something like Returnal, it’s a super gameplay heavy game with a really awesome story behind it. Or Hades. They are gems here. 

Jacek: Or Death Stranding. 

What games served as inspiration for you while developing Cronos? 

Jacek: Okay, so let’s brace for this one. 

Wojciech: Of course, the Resident Evil series, especially the Resident Evil 2 remake and the remake of Resi 4, that was a really awesome game that we loved. Dead Space is obvious, because of the suited protagonist and monsters based on body horror. In terms of new games, Signalis was definitely something that really hit us hard, this more indie survival horror that was awesome, with awesome visuals and an awesome art style. Returnal, which I already mentioned, was also something that was really inspiring. 

Jacek: I think Resi 8, also. For maybe less obvious stuff, Nier: Automata, Bloodborne with the disease in the city and how it affects people and who you are. A little bit of Death Stranding in terms of vibe, maybe that’s in there. Control, showing you can do weird horror with action also was somewhere there in the beginning. Even a little bit of Firewatch was there at the beginning. 

Wojciech: Yeah, like being isolated and talking with people you cannot see. 

Jacek: There’s also some dialogue choices in our game. 

Wojciech: All the survival horror games we played, I think, are there at some point. Even the old ones. We just love them, so maybe they’re there on some subconscious level. Maybe it’s not easy to connect, but yeah. 

Jacek: Also From Software games, like the From Software approach or philosophy in terms of lore, or being hard but true in a way, to the players. I think that’s also somewhere there in Cronos. 

Would you describe Cronos as a difficult game then? 

Both: Yes. 

Jacek: I don’t think you should be afraid of that, but I think challenging is a better word. This game will challenge you as a game should. 

Wojciech: I think people perceive Resi 2 as a challenging game, and I think we are also challenging, because of the limited inventory and limited resources, and our merge system that is kind of punishing. If you don’t pay attention and if you let monsters absorb other fallen monsters, you can even create a small boss fight for yourself. So yeah, you definitely need to watch out. 

Jacek: It’s not hardcore like Sekiro, but again it is challenging. 

Wojciech: It’s more about the decision. Accuracy is maybe not needed as much as knowing your plan, how to position yourself, where to use the flamethrower to burn the bodies and cancel the merging of enemies. I think those are the most important decisions. 

Jacek: And there’s a lot of them in Cronos. 

Are there difficulty settings or is it just one level of difficulty for everyone? 

Jacek: You start with the one, and when you finish the game you can unlock an even harder one. 

Wojciech: Please play as we intended the game to be, and then you can bump up the difficulty for a super high challenge, and play New Game plus. 

Jacek: Because it’s survival horror, to make it work it needs to be a bit challenging. 

Because you need to be scared, and if it’s too easy you’re not scared, right? 

Jacek: Yeah, and also with that, you can play the game many times of course, but the first experience is the first experience. So if you do easy mode, somebody will play it and maybe have less scares or something, but to play as intended, this is why we decided to go with our difficulty at the beginning. Which is also similar to From Software’s approach. 

Cronos is much more rooted in sci-fi compared to past Bloober games, was that a difficult shift for you? 

Jacek: I think it was more exciting. Some of us are very into sci-fi, and to have the option to try to do something there… I love time travel stuff, and sometimes Wojciech would be like ‘Stop thinking about it, about how it works, just go there, it doesn’t matter!’ But no, let’s figure this out, so we had all sorts of conversations with writers. I think most of the time it was a nice challenge, and mostly was exciting, not problems. It was like ‘Yeah, now we can do something on our own!’ We just needed to decide the angle of sci-fi and time travel we want to tell, and make it as coherent as we can. So yeah, mostly exciting. 

Cronos regularly has the player traveling back to 1980s Poland, how much of that experience is based on your own experiences and environments? 

Wojciech: To be honest, I was too young to remember the ‘80s. But of course, we lived more in this post-communist Poland, where we can still feel the effect of the old days. We had the chance to grow up in a Poland that was changing into what it is right now. But we know all the stories from our parents and grandparents, and we love these old designs of furniture from those times, which I think is really expensive right now. Everything changed, but we felt that it was really interesting and exotic for our audience, so we did it. 

We started it with Observer, to create a cyberpunk version of Poland, then with The Medium we went bigger because we had the whole hotel, and then with Cronos we took the whole district. The truth is that ‘The New Dawn’, the subtitle of the game, is also the name of the district where the game is happening, and The New Dawn is based on a real district that is here in Kraków. The real one is called Nowa Huta, which can easily be translated into ‘the new steelworks’. It was like a city within a city, built by communists in the 50’s, and it was built around this factory, so every worker can live this dream life there. Like you work in the factory and you have everything around you. 

Jacek: [In finger quotes] “Everything.” 

Wojciech: It was really cool for us, because it also speaks to the story. 

Jacek: In case of personal experience, we also need to remember it’s our second game in Poland, so I think most of that was in The Medium. The next one was like ‘Okay, this is what we are doing, we feel good with that so let’s go.’ In the case of our experience I’m not sure if there is much of it, but our writers [and artists] are also living in this district now, in Nowa Huta, so they have a lot of cool stories and ideas. They’re older than us, so they can give us a good reference or say ‘I remember how it was,’ so I think in the overall team there is a part about how we felt about the times or what we heard about it, but it’s another game that we are doing in Poland so maybe it resonates strongly with all of us. It works very well with the story, so it’s ‘Hey let’s show it to the people,’ it’s something different. 

 What do you think is the most interesting thing about Cronos? 

Wojciech: That’s a hard one. Because we love a lot about our game. The Traveller, the protagonist, I love the design that we created. I love the merging mechanics, I love the gunplay in the game, we managed to create really awesome weapons that you can really feel. I love it, I love the story, I love that you’re extracting people and all the twisted things that are connected to it, how the world reacts and who you extract. I think there are a lot of cool things, and the game is weird, I love it. Compared to Dead Space and stuff, it’s a really weird game. 

Jacek: I think the best thing about Cronos is that this is Cronos. We have all these strange ingredients that we all love here. We can’t say there’s one thing, because there’s a combination, and there’s nothing like ‘I don’t like this part,’ it’s a combination that we truly love that makes this game different and special. 

Bloober proved itself in the horror game and then it got to work on a legendary IP like Silent Hill. You’re coming out with a survival horror game now, would you be interested in making a game in a big survival horror series like Resident Evil? 

Jacek: Personally, it’s something to think about, because it’s like never meet your heroes, and sometimes that’s unfortunately true. So maybe you want to work on a loved IP like Resident Evil, but at the same time it can be very punishing. But I think personally I would go for it, but if at the same time, somebody said ‘Let’s expand the Cronos universe,’ that would be a very tough decision. But I think I would go with Cronos. 

Wojciech: There’s a lot of cool horror IPs, but also I think designing our own worlds is awesome. I think it always depends on the circumstances. 

Jacek: We’re big survival horror fans, but I think it’s still better to play a new Resident Evil game than maybe make it. 

If there’s anything else you want to say, now’s the part where you get to say it, and I’ll publish it exactly as you say it. 

Wojciech: Exactly? Oh, that’s tricky. Thank you, but to be honest, we would like to say thank you to our players, thank you for supporting us, playing our games. I think Cronos will be a crazy ride, so please. 

Jacek: We can’t wait to see how people will react, play it, and figure out what's happening there. 

Cronos: The New Dawn is set to be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam in 2025.