Cronos: The New Dawn dev diary delves into the combat and The Merge
A new developer diary from Bloober Team has revealed more about how combat works in Cronos: The New Dawn, their new and original sci-fi horror game.
Combat in Cronos is defined by The Merge, an evolving threat that can dynamically transform each encounter. Enemies known as Orphans can absorb corpses that transforms them mid-battle into more dangerous forms. As they do this, they gain new abilities, forcing the player to adapt their approach and change weapons, but the fascinating twist is that as you kill Orphans, this provides more fodder for others to consume and transform from, building out from traditional archetypes like runners, bruisers and the like.
Bloober’s Jacek Zieba and Shamil Yanbukhtin explain how the encounters have all been hand-crafted to present different opportunities to players, and avoid pigeon-holing them into a single approach. You can use the environment to lure enemies out to give you the advantage, or if you’re super confident in your abilities, go ultra-aggressive and get close enough for melee.
Announced last October, Cronos: The New Dawn’s takes place in a post-apocalyptic rendition of 1980s Poland. This is the home to a survival horror adventure with some hefty helpings of sci-fi and time travel. You’ll play as a time-hopping Traveller, going back through time rifts to try and extract people who didn’t survive the apocalypse. Some of the most notable inspirations include the Dead Space franchise and the movie Twelve Monkeys. The Traveller’s own suit takes its inspiration from older deep sea diving suits, alluding to the theme of diving through time to save people.
Bloober has been dishing out occasional behind-the-scenes and Q&A videos like this, gradually teasing out what to expect from this horror title. We look forward to the next entry.
Cronos: The New Dawn is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC later this year.
