Cronos: The New Dawn review...

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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99Subscribe now Battlefield 6 Borderlands 4 Essential Hardware Don't miss these Cronos: The New Dawn's sci-fi survival horror channels RE4 and Dead Space, but it took Bloober awhile to realize it 'subconsciously' is also a game about Covid Bloober Team's upcoming horror game Cronos: The New Dawn just got even harder to survive as the 'body-horror monstrosities' can work together 'There are big-ass tanky guys': Cronos: The New Dawn devs discuss the gruelling combat and beg players to not let the enemies merge, 'You will suffer' 'No more James Sunderland': After a successful Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team is ready to move on and 'treat ourselves' The Drifter review—Gritty Aussie noir meets conspiratorial sci-fi FBC: Firebreak review – Delightfully silly, but hindered by balancing issues and limited replay value Mafia: The Old Country review—A failed experiment and a bitter disappointment Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review - A soulslike without a soul Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream review—Beautiful Scandinavian stealth that's too strict for its own good I've played 2 hours of MindsEye and it's pretty bad so far, I'm afraid Shadow Labyrinth review: Pac-Man is entertainingly miscast in this grimdark Metroidvania Killing Floor 3 review: Classic monster-killing fun The flood of Silent Hill F previews highlight an emphasis on combat that seems like a bit much The Alters review: A masterclass in high tension gaming Mycopunk Review: Long live wacky co-op shooters Cronos: The New Dawn When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Cronos: The New Dawn review Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Elie Gould 3 September 2025 (Image: © Bloober Team) Our Verdict The scariest part of Cronos: The New Dawn is probably the frustrating combat, and while it boasts a selection of surprisingly cool puzzles, they're not enough to save the experience. PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. I love a good horror game, even if my frayed nerves don't. And not just any jumpscare-filled adventure, but a properly terrifying experience that'll send shivers down my spine and keep me awake at night for weeks to come. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A survival horror game with time travel and zombies set in the Nowa Huta district of Kraków. Release date September 5, 2025 Expect to pay £49.99/ $59.99 Developer Bloober Team Publisher Bloober Team SA Reviewed on RTX 3070, Core AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 16GB RAM Multiplayer No Steam Deck Not verified Link Steam £37.99View at Loaded (Formerly CDKeys) £49.99View at very.co.uk Check Amazon So I was looking forward to jumping headfirst into Bloober Team's new survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn and seeking out its grotesque zombie-like oddities, vile medical horrors, and some confusing and tension-filled time travel horror. Unfortunately, the kind of horror I was hoping for did not await me in Cronos. I often find that survival horror delivers weaker frights. Monsters just don't seem that scary when I'm piled high with guns, ammo, and every single explosive I can get my hands on. So in this respect, Cronos started on the back foot. Related Articles Cronos: The New Dawn's sci-fi survival horror channels RE4 and Dead Space, but it took Bloober awhile to realize it 'subconsciously' is also a game about Covid Bloober Team's upcoming horror game Cronos: The New Dawn just got even harder to survive as the 'body-horror monstrosities' can work together 'There are big-ass tanky guys': Cronos: The New Dawn devs discuss the gruelling combat and beg players to not let the enemies merge, 'You will suffer' (Image credit: Bloober Team) Cronos' monsters are of the kind that just kind of amble around or hugely telegraph their big swings or sprints. You can also usually hear the zombies (which are called Orphans) before you see them. Couple this with just how frustrating it can be to deal with waves of Orphans, and these enemies lose almost all of their fear factor. My first reaction to seeing an Orphan walk towards me shouldn't be a groan. But there's no escaping these zombies. Cronos sees you traverse the abandoned district of Nowa Huta, years after a zombie outbreak in the steelworks spread like wildfire and engulfed the city. Now, all that's left is decaying infrastructure, tons of Orphans, and some time anomalies that are slowly breaking down what's left of the city. At times, you travel back in time to the moments surrounding the initial outbreak to gather intel from people who witnessed it all. But as this is just post-outbreak, there'll still be some Orphans lurking around. What can make these encounters frustrating, however, are the game's checkpoints. Cronos auto-saves so often that sometimes it can mire you in impossible situations. I ran into several instances where I got killed just after a checkpoint and then respawned right where I died. With my health just as low as before, this meant I'd die to one hit again when I came back, trapping me in an endless loop of falling to the same enemy over and over. The only way forward is to reload to an earlier point and go at it again completely fresh. You'd better hope you remembered to make regular manual saves. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. (Image credit: Bloober Team) In a game that otherwise stresses the importance of restraint and holding on to your items, some of the Orphans can be a massive drain on resources. In one fight against a particularly huge Orphan, I went through every shred of ammo on me, plus everything that was lying around the boss room, and still didn't manage to take it down—and I even threw some punches and kicks in there for good measure. It wasn't until my third attempt that I decided to go back to a safe room and spend all my resources on making yet more bullets and mini-explosives known as pyres. This eventually took it down, but it set me back to square one after I had worked so hard to scrimp and save resources together over the preceding hours. The issues are worsened by seriously stingy resource spawns. Too often, the game doesn't give you what you need—particularly bullets or healing—instead handing over something you either already have too much of or just don't have a use for. I swear, if I pick up even one more batch of energy token miles out from an upgrade room when I'm down to my last two bullets with almost no health left, I'm going to scream. (Image credit: Bloober Team) Combat in Cronos feels grating at times. I felt like I was almost always either cheesing my way through packs of Orphans by the skin of my teeth in an effort to save precious resources or forced to spend everything I had to take just one big guy down. But then, sometimes I found myself blasting through enemies with ease without having to use too much ammo at all—the difficulty level of encounters just didn't seem consistent enough for me to ever get a read on the situation at hand. I found Chronos' story similarly muddled, and it takes its sweet time to get going. For the first eight hours or so, all the game seems to be is yet another take on the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic. I don't know if it's because I had a rather nasty time over those few years or whether it's just that the subject has been completely overdone at this point, but I really have no patience left for tales about being placed under a restrictive lockdown, barred from social gatherings, and kept in the dark. When the time travel elements finally reveal themselves, they offer a far more interesting side to the story. The ending, which I won't spoil here, didn't necessarily catch me by surprise (the foreshadowing is a little too heavy for that), but it explores some genuinely interesting ideas. I just wish Cronos got to that stuff faster, so we could spend more time exploring the implications of those revelations, instead of getting bogged down with the hundredth conveniently placed letter talking about how there's no school tomorrow because of a lockdown, or person A feeling bad for abandoning person B. Notes and journal entries already feel like a tired storytelling trope at this point, and Cronos massively overuses them to tell very predictable stories. Image 1 of 5 (Image credit: Bloober Team) (Image credit: Bloober Team) (Image credit: Bloober Team) (Image credit: Bloober Team) (Image credit: Bloober Team) In amongst all that, however, there are moments of beauty, and I'm not just talking about the fantastic setting of Nowa Huta and the incredible apocalyptic scenery of the destroyed district marred by zombies and anomalies. Where Cronos gets truly engaging is in the puzzles you need to solve to progress through its ruined world. There are temporal disturbances scattered throughout the map that you can interact with using an extension added to each of your guns. Aiming and firing at them will see parts of the map rewound through time into previous forms. You can use this to rebuild bridges, restore a destroyed roof so you can climb onto it, or move broken chunks of floating earth that have been ripped apart due to time anomalies to and from other large areas of land. It may seem small, but it's a welcome respite from the fights. (Image credit: Bloober Team) Then there's the gravity boots, which you pick up about halfway through the game. These are so much fun to use, allowing you to walk on designated paths up walls and on ceilings while jumping across huge craters from one launch pad to another. Navigating these areas is so intuitive that it really becomes second nature, despite the unusual movement. But it's not just about traversal—these short moments of solving puzzles also gave me enough room to truly take in the world around me. I found myself sitting back at times and just enjoying seeing the landscape of Nowa Huta from a new perspective. I loved it all so much that it had me wishing Cronos was a survival puzzle game rather than survival horror. But these puzzles can only take the game so far. I wish I could say that I had a better time with Cronos, but the highs just weren't high enough, or occurred often enough, to weigh out the gruellingly frustrating lows. It wasn't the horror game I'd hoped it would be, as it just wasn't that scary, in part due to frustrating fights and odd resource management. If you do decide to give Cronos a go, I'd just recommend taking your time with it, stepping away when it all gets a bit much, and try to pet the cats as often as you can—it helps. 2025 games: This year's upcoming releases Best PC games: Our all-time favorites Free PC games: Freebie fest Best FPS games: Finest gunplay Best RPGs: Grand adventures Best co-op games: Better together Cronos: The New Dawn: Price Comparison £37.99View £49.99View No price informationCheck Amazon We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices powered by The Verdict Read our review policy Cronos: The New Dawn The scariest part of Cronos: The New Dawn is probably the frustrating combat, and while it boasts a selection of surprisingly cool puzzles, they're not enough to save the experience. News Writer Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Cronos: The New Dawn's sci-fi survival horror channels RE4 and Dead Space, but it took Bloober awhile to realize it 'subconsciously' is also a game about Covid Bloober Team's upcoming horror game Cronos: The New Dawn just got even harder to survive as the 'body-horror monstrosities' can work together 'There are big-ass tanky guys': Cronos: The New Dawn devs discuss the gruelling combat and beg players to not let the enemies merge, 'You will suffer' 'No more James Sunderland': After a successful Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team is ready to move on and 'treat ourselves' The Drifter review—Gritty Aussie noir meets conspiratorial sci-fi FBC: Firebreak review – Delightfully silly, but hindered by balancing issues and limited replay value Latest in Horror REPO has announced its next update, but we actually have a date this time, rather than a series of videos to slowly announce it Supermassive Games is adding a new tool to its next horror game Directive 8020 that'll give players a 'second chance' to save their favourite characters Silent Hill f is actually really fun when there's not a little worm in your ear telling you to compare every scene against Silent Hill 2 'No more James Sunderland': After a successful Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team is ready to move on and 'treat ourselves' 'We have become experts at putting Poland into games': Cronos: The New Dawn is set in a district of Kraków simply because Bloober wanted to 'show our crib to the audience' Hinako Shimizu's arc in Silent Hill f is shaped by the Japanese women's rights movement of the 1960s and depicts 'how she musters the courage to combat' repression she encounters Latest in Reviews Cronos: The New Dawn Review—Kill it with fire GameSir G7 Pro Tri-Mode review Corsair Scimitar Elite Wireless SE review Razer | Kuromi Collection PC peripherals review Crucial T710 2 TB NVMe SSD review Crucial X10 review HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've tested a ton of notebooks this generation and these are the best in every category Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customizable keyboards for competitive gaming Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer GameSir G7 Pro Tri-Mode review Corsair Scimitar Elite Wireless SE review Razer | Kuromi Collection PC peripherals review Crucial T710 2 TB NVMe SSD review Crucial X10 review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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