Cronos: The New Dawn Shows 35 Minutes of Action-Horror in Unreal Engine 5

Bloober Team is stepping away from its usual slow-burn horror formula with Cronos: The New Dawn, and the latest 35-minute gameplay video makes that shift obvious. This is their most ambitious project since Silent Hill 2 Remake, and based on what they’ve shared so far, it’s shaping up to be more action-focused, more reactive, and far more technically advanced than anything they’ve made before.

This new video shows the opening of the game. The protagonist, known only as Traveler ND-3576, lands in an area called New Dawn and begins her mission to locate someone called the Predecessor. It's the very start of the game, so the developers are putting this footage out there knowing full well that it's spoiler territory. But they clearly want to prove something, and they’ve decided to do it with actual gameplay.

Cronos: The New Dawn takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where ancient brutalist ruins collide with futuristic tech. Players take on the role of a Traveler, an agent working for a group known as the Collective. Her task? Navigate the wastelands of the future, uncover time rifts, and travel back to 1980s-era Poland.

This isn't time travel for the sake of history. In this game, the past holds the key to survival. You'll need to track down people who died in the apocalypse and extract their "Essences" using a tool called the Harvester. Those Essences then follow you into the future, adding a strange companion system that’s part lore, part gameplay mechanic.

The enemies in Cronos aren’t just mutated monsters or rogue AI. They're built from the remains of humanity itself. Bloober Team describes them as “nightmarish creatures,” and in the gameplay footage, they look like grotesque hybrids that fuse organic bodies with decaying tech. The Traveler fights them using a range of gear, though we don’t get the full loadout in the preview. What we do see, though, is fast movement, high-impact weapons, and tight camera angles — more third-person action than exploration-heavy horror.

Bloober seems to have taken a few lessons from working with Konami on Silent Hill 2 Remake. That title had a strong atmosphere but suffered from performance problems, especially on PC. Stuttering, long load times, and issues in indoor areas pulled it down at launch. Cronos is another Unreal Engine 5 project, and this time, Bloober appears more prepared.

They’ve confirmed that the game uses UE5, and all signs point to it supporting Lumen and Nanite. Given that Silent Hill 2 Remake had hardware Lumen, it’s a safe bet this new IP will too. The visuals in the gameplay preview back this up — lighting shifts in real time, particles scatter across damaged streets, and the transitions between zones are smooth.

The game needs DirectX 12 and 50 GB of storage space. Bloober hasn’t revealed what frame rates or resolutions those specs aim for, but it’s probably not for ultra settings at 4K. Even so, if the optimization is solid this time, the performance should be more stable than what Silent Hill 2 Remake had at launch.

The main character, ND-3576, might not be a household name yet, but Cronos leans hard into character-driven narrative. The game’s lore blends high-concept science fiction with personal trauma, and the time travel mechanic is central to both. There’s a clear structure to the story: find the rifts, retrieve the Essences, survive long enough to piece together the bigger picture.

There’s also something going on with the game's aesthetic that separates it from typical survival horror. New Dawn looks more industrial than haunted. The setting feels like a sci-fi wasteland pulled from Stalker or Metro, with rusted machinery, flickering neon, and heavy fog. But instead of just being window dressing, that world seems to be part of the puzzle. It’s not just about surviving — it’s about understanding what happened and why.

So far, Bloober has not announced any delays. Cronos: The New Dawn is still scheduled to launch this fall on PC. Console versions haven’t been detailed yet, but given Bloober’s history, PS5 and Xbox Series versions are likely.

This isn’t just another horror game. It’s Bloober Team trying to redefine what their studio can do. The gameplay shows confidence. The worldbuilding has depth. The tech is there — if it holds up at launch. And most importantly, it’s not riding the coattails of a known franchise this time. Cronos stands on its own.

Stay tuned, because this one looks like the game Bloober has been building toward for years.