“We just love furniture from our grandma’s houses.”
Image credit: Bloober
Bloober Team is a name that’s synonymous with horror games, but with the recent release of its Silent Hill 2 Remake it’s now seen huge success – it topped a million copies sold in under a week, to be precise.
It was a rocky road, though, with protective fans frequently raising concerns of whether the studio was the right team for the job, considering the sometimes mixed reactions to its previous output. It’s fair to say, Bloober has proven those fans wrong with a remake that’s met the high standards of critics and fans alike.
So how will Bloober follow Silent Hill 2 Remake? With its own original take on the same survival horror genre, albeit set in an alternate, sci-fi version of 1980s Poland. That’s the premise of Cronos: The New Dawn, as revealed during last week’s Xbox Partner Preview.
“We are super happy for the [Silent Hill] team, for the accomplishments, and I do believe that they paved the path for us,” co-director Wojciech Piejko tells me. “They dramatically changed the reception of our company on the internet from ‘Bloober should not touch Silent Hill’ to ‘new great game from Bloober!’
“I’m super thankful for them and I know it wasn’t easy to survive all these critics on the internet. You always have to remember there are people behind every game. It doesn’t make your work easier. So kudos for [the team], because they made the impossible possible with making Silent Hill.”
Jacek Zięba, also co-director, adds there is pressure for Cronos to follow up on that critical reception, but Silent Hill 2 has been a success for the whole company, not just that specific development team. “We are still part of the big Bloober family,” he says. “So it’s like their success is our success, our success will be their success, and at some point there is no us and them.”
Cronos: The New Dawn has been in development alongside Silent Hill 2, beginning after the release of Bloober’s previous original game The Medium, with distinct teams for each game. Still, there has been some crossover between them, albeit on a technical level rather than philosophical. They shared builds for playtesting, for instance, and the Silent Hill team paved the way for a third-person perspective, when Bloober’s previous games had fixed camera angles or first-person view.
I ask the pair how it feels for the studio to be working on an original game, following such a high profile remake. “Everything has pros and cons,” says Piejko. “Of course, developing this legendary game was a big challenge but also a dream come true for us in Bloober.”
“I think it was never bad to be in Silent Hill,” adds Zięba. “I don’t think we are focusing on ‘hey now we are showing something that’s ours’. We will just show our new great fucking games. That’s the approach here, not thinking ‘oh but this one is ours’. It’s also special by that, but we don’t think in these categories.”
Bloober is describing Cronos: The New Dawn as its first survival horror based on an original IP. Of course, it’s worked on original and existing IP in the past – from The Medium to Observer and Blair Witch – but this new game will be its first, proper survival horror game (The Medium was the closest the studio came to survival horror, says Zięba, but played more like an adventure game). That surely makes it a fitting follow-up to Silent Hill 2.
Last year, Bloober co-founder Piotr Babieno stated the company was “closing the era of making psychological horror games” and would instead be making “mass-market horror”. That appears to have informed the decision to develop a new survival horror game. “Horror is always a niche,” says Piejko, “but I do believe Piotr means that we will incorporate more gameplay elements”. That doesn’t mean running and gunning, but gameplay more aligned with the likes of Resident Evil and (of course) Silent Hill by mixing puzzle solving and shooting, not relying purely on atmosphere.
Shooting will be a major part of Cronos, though. The end of the announcement trailer includes a snippet of third-person footage and the protagonist wields a transforming gun. In typical fashion, resources will be scarce and players will be outnumbered by enemies. Piejko also hints at a unique combat mechanic to “spice it up”, along the lines of Dead Space’s limb shooting or Alan Wake’s flashlight, though wouldn’t detail further.
It’s the setting that’s perhaps most intriguing: an alternate history 1980s Poland with sci-fi elements. “We like using Poland and our hometown, Krakow, as a setting and we are good with it,” says Zięba. “It’s something a bit alien for other people outside of Poland, more exotic and interesting, and it’s working for us.” Poland is seen less in video games than other countries and the city has plenty of interesting architecture to inspire.
That’s also informed the retro-futuristic vibe, alongside obvious influences like Alien. “We just love furniture from our grandma’s houses,” adds Piejko. Perhaps that explains the chess game in the trailer. The Netflix show Travelers has also been influential, along with the films 12 Monkeys and John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Indeed, the protagonist is a person in a hulking suit known as a Traveller sent back in time to the ruins of human civilisation to seek time rifts and survive in a harsh environment with strange monsters, extracting those in the past who didn’t survive. Another 1980s Schwarzenegger-starring sci-fi film about time travelling may have also influenced the story, the pair joke.
Perhaps the biggest question of all for horror fans, is just how scary will Cronos: The New Dawn be? “We never go heavy on jump scares,” says Piejko. “There’s atmosphere and something going under your skin or inside your mind because with the best horror, the horror is in your head.
“Jump scares can be cheesy or just tiresome, so it’s atmosphere and what you’re thinking is behind the corner.”
Though there’s no specific release date, Cronos: The New Dawn is set for release in 2025 – that’s just around the corner, waiting to scare us silly.
