We Love It's Guide to…
As a Traveler in a ruined future, explore time rifts into 1980s Poland, fight merging creatures, and harvest human essences.
Released 05 Sep 2025
Burn Before They Merge
Harvest Human Essences
Jump Between Eras
A whole new breed of survival horror emerges with Cronos: The New Dawn. Survive the brutal wastelands of the future, fight nightmarish merging creatures and jump back in time to harvest souls as you seek to uncover the origins of the apocalypse that wiped out humanity.
Developed by Bloober Team · Published by Bloober Team SA
You play as a Traveler working for the enigmatic Collective, exploring a post-apocalyptic future and using time rifts to reach 1980s Poland. Your mission is to find people who died in the catastrophe known as the Change and extract their Essences.
Explore interconnected, hostile areas, search for supplies, solve environmental obstacles, and fight creatures formed from humanity’s remnants. Enemies can absorb fallen creatures and grow stronger, so you can burn their bodies to prevent them from merging.
Manage limited ammunition, healing items, and inventory space while crafting supplies and upgrading your weapons and suit. Collected Essences can improve your combat ability, but carrying more also brings unsettling effects; your choices and what you collect can influence the journey.
Players who enjoy the game often praise its oppressive atmosphere, detailed environments, and sound design, alongside combat that makes scarce ammunition and the threat of enemy merging shape each encounter. Exploration and the gradually revealed story also keep many players engaged, though some find the plot cryptic. Reviews also frequently criticize the tight inventory, backtracking, and demanding difficulty; opinions on pacing and performance vary.
Cronos: The New Dawn is 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.
Set in a grim world where Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology, Cronos: The New Dawn lets you experience a gripping story that straddles the line between past and future.
In the past, you will witness a world in the throes of The Change, a cataclysmic event that forever altered humanity. Meanwhile, in the ravaged wastelands of the future, every moment is a fight for survival against dangerous abominations that will test both your reflexes and your tactical thinking.
You are a Traveler working for the enigmatic Collective, tasked with scouring the wastelands of the future in search of time rifts that will transport you to 1980s-era Poland.
In a desolate world filled with ever-present danger, your survival hinges on your ability to strategize and plan ahead. The enemies you’ll encounter are nightmarish creatures, born from the remnants of humanity – defeating them will require you to make full use of your arsenal.
You can manipulate temporal Anomalies to clear a path through the desolate environment, and will have to scavenge for resources to replenish your limited ammo and supplies. Good preparation is key. Once in battle, split-second decisions can mean the difference between life
and death.
The creatures you kill won’t stay dead for long. Fallen enemies can be absorbed by others — through a grotesque process called Merging — to become faster, tougher, and far deadlier.
The only way to stop them? Burn their bodies. And do it fast.
If you don’t, you’ll face ever-evolving abominations that will push your combat skills to their limits.
Your mission is to locate key people from the past who perished in the ensuing apocalypse. Using your all-powerful Harvester, you can extract their Essences and have them accompany you into the future.
But be wary: these essences have a profound impact on your journey.
The more you carry, the more haunted your suit becomes — increasing your prowess on the battlefield but also bringing with them whispers in your ear and flickers into your vision, edging you ever closer to madness.
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 47 |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller support | PlayStation, Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
| Demo | View demo on Steam |
| DLC / extras | 1 listed on Steam |
| Content notices |
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| Website | Official website |
