During a recent press event, we went hands-on with Cronos: The New Dawn, the upcoming survival horror game based on a brand new IP created by Polish developer Bloober Team. Following the demo session, we interviewed Bloober's Lead Level Designer, Piotr Tylus, to learn more about this intriguing game, which is currently scheduled to launch sometime in the Fall season for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
The setting here is very much close to home for you and the development team. First and foremost, what made you guys pick this specific city to focus on for Kronos?
Well, it's part of history for at least part of the Bloober team, which has made games in Poland before. It's a formula that works better every time. In here, it's on a grander scale. For one of our developers, it's really, like, personal. He lives some ten minutes from the location that inspired the game. It's just pretty cool to put a part of you and a part of history in there, and also, it gives you this advantage that it's pretty exotic in terms of setting. Not that many people have exposure to this brutalist socialist stuff. So for us, it's just important and also exciting and hopefully gonna be exciting for other people.
I don't have a connection to Nowa Huta or Krakow. I don't live there, but it was a great opportunity to do my craft, do the research, being there, I can be on a trip, like moving through the streets, and it's always a fun part of the job just being on the location. For me, it was the first time to actually recreate something real, so yeah, it was a fun process. You want to take the atmosphere in, but you also have to gamify to some degree, right? You can't take it 1-to-1 and call it a day.
Yeah, I think the last thing players want is to have to actually walk through entire city blocks while they're being chased by some of these anomalies. Anyway, it feels like there's a combination of very intimate encounters within hallways and expansive, open arenas. How do you balance the two to keep the narrative interesting while still flowing for Cronos?
It's always a balancing act. We start the process by basically setting up the base of what we want to achieve at the moment and then picking the proper place to build around it. Those locations are not random. We try to understand what's the best fit for the encounter we want to make and the game's mechanics to keep things fresh. Also, the merging mechanic comes in handy because it's a really flexible framework to work with. You can do a lot of cool stuff. You probably saw some of the setups, and it grows more and more into the game. Hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah. When you're building out these levels, do you have a specific objective in mind where you want the player to kind of backtrack more than in earlier sections?
For sure, it's really important to give this idea. Backtracking is a thing in our game. There's optional routes in our game. Also, exploration is a huge part of Cronos and it also plays to the difficulty. If you won't explore, you're probably gonna have a hard time, but that's a challenge that you're imposing on yourself. We want to make players curious but also give them a reason behind all this exploration. It's part story, part actual thing that will help them push through all the challenges they face.
I came across a couple of collectibles during my playthrough, such as comic books. We also discovered one cat by going off the beaten path. What other side objectives or collectibles have you tucked away in the game's levels?
I believe that in the demo, we have a pretty representative part of what you can expect later. Of course, there's also just small side stories related to places, actually. There's a couple of narrative bits that maybe you don't need to collect them to understand the story, but if you want to feel what those people feel, it's probably wise to do that, but yeah, mostly, it's those collectibles that you mentioned and also just valuables, like energy, how we call it in our game, to make yourself stronger.
How much will players be able to backtrack and return to much earlier areas in Cronos: The New Dawn?
I need to bite my tongue. I cannot really share anything, but I will only say that it opens up. I'll put it that way.
One of the things that you hinted at before we got into the demo was that there would be different survivors to recruit, and we could choose whether we wanted to save them or not. Will these decisions impact either the levels that you go into or how you can proceed?
To some degree, those decisions matter in terms of both, what you have around, what you experience. Also, there's the gameplay element to that. There are those perks that we mentioned in the presentation. You couldn't see that in the demo. Also, let's say those souls go through the journey with you, let's put it that way. Who you're gonna choose, who you're gonna save, affects the experience overall.
How permanent are those choices in Cronos?
That's a good one. Let's put it that way: there's no coming back after you make a choice. Of course, if you want to replay the game with different choices, you are free to do so.
Are you considering including a New Game Plus mode for Cronos: The New Dawn?
There is a New Game Plus, and there's difficulty modifiers as well.
Resource management is very much a central pillar to survival horror, and here you had to make a lot of interesting choices as you're gathering these resources, gathering whether it's energy or the chemicals and the metal scraps to choose whether you want to create ammunition or health. How do you kind of balance it by having the scarcity but also ensuring that players never run out of options?
Yeah, there are some mechanics in the game that support that. Enemies are dropping stuff so that there is a way for you to survive even if you're in a pinch, but it requires a little bit more work for the player. Other than that, it's just playtesting and what we feel like the experience we want to give you is, because you probably noticed that there are some areas or some, let's say, challenges, which are designed in a certain way that you need to survive to pull through. We wanted to have those difficulty spikes to keep it fresh.
The boss fight that bookended our demo session was pretty much a battle of attrition where we wound up using just about every resource we had on hand, whether it was the healing sprays, the shotgun ammo, or the handgun ammo. If players find themselves backed into a wall during one of these boss fights where they run out of ammo, do you generate new ammo throughout the encounters that players can still pick up to finish the fight?
As I mentioned, if there are other enemies, there is a way to replenish resources, especially if you're low, but with those encounters, there's a fixed way. You can always come back and explore more because you probably missed something if you feel like you're not well-equipped. But as you mentioned, we want the player to use all the tools available. That's important for us. That's why there are some challenges you need to overcome to learn that this works that way, and you need to keep using it in order to go through.
One of the fascinating mechanics we haven't seen before in survival games is the merge system for Cronos: The New Dawn. When introducing new enemy types, do you onboard the player by introducing them on their own, or do you give them a trial by fire by throwing this new enemy type into something that can merge with them right away?
Well, it differs in terms of what enemy we're talking about. Sometimes it's like that, other times it's more in an intimate scenario.
A lot of times, these encounters feel fair. You might not be able to see something on screen, but you can definitely hear it coming up behind you. On the other hand, in the apartments, it was very claustrophobic and there you introduce exploding enemies that players had never seen before, so they will go around the corner and randomly just explode in a shower of acid on them. What's your mindset for shocking the players with moments like this?
Well, with those little ones... We don't really want players to feel like they are invincible. Sometimes you need to slow down. The world is dangerous, right? So, it's wise to look around, so yeah, there are some enemies like that, like traps. That's the reason behind it. Of course, as you can imagine, they reappear in a different context later on.
You guys introduced the torch fuel more as a defensive mechanic to drop down since it burns enemies around you and allows you to escape. But at the same time, you use it to essentially solve environmental puzzles, burn away blockades in your path, et cetera. What was behind the conscious decision to make that a core traversal mechanic?
In those moments, you need to pick your path. Sometimes, the main path is closed, and it's just a learning experience, more or less, but there are a lot of optional paths that you can take. You might be in trouble there, but you can always come back later if you're more confident with that.
The reason behind it is to put a little bit more decision-making because our combat is all about you being prepared. You decide what you want to do and how to approach.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a project that's been in development at Bloober Team for at least four years. During this time, you released the Silent Hill 2 remake to the public. How did your development with Silent Hill 2 influence how you designed levels for this game?
We are sharing our experiences for sure. We provide each other with feedback, so we try to learn our lessons. During development, as you can imagine, there's a lot of iteration going around. You play test and iterate and so on and so on. But we also wanted to make our own thing. I like the analogy from the presentation, that pizzas have different toppings and there is no superior pizza. We want to cook a little bit differently, just to separate ourselves from the other projects we're doing.
The city setting here is something that Western players might not be very familiar with in terms of Poland. Is there one piece of media, whether a movie or book, that you feel represents the city and the time period seen in the story?
That's a good question. There's a lot of old Polish socialist era stuff. Something specific for Krakow... It's hard to commit to one thing, at least from my perspective, because actually being there is probably the best way, to just visit, if you want to feel this atmosphere.
Fair enough. During my demo playthrough, I ran into one enemy wearing a shirt that was obviously modeled from The Medium. What sort of other Easter eggs have you tossed in there from previous Bloober games?
If you look closely enough, some comic books can be familiar, let's put it that way. But there are a couple more Easter eggs later on, and I will leave them for you to discover.
You've surely played through a lot of Cronos yourself. What do you think is the most effective way to survive?
You mentioned that you used the flamethrower as a defensive tool. I actually rather use it offensively or in a set-up situation, like, oh, maybe I will use merge to my advantage to bait one of those. Perhaps that's the tip I will share on how to overcome some challenges—use some situation to your benefit that might not be as obvious.
In closing, is there one type of encounter or level you feel most passionate about, like you think it's your best work in the game?
I can't really share what's ahead of you, but yeah, there's for sure something that puts your pressure up. There are a couple of places, but I can't really spoil it.
Understandable. Thank you for your time!
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