Interview
September 2, 2025
Cronos: The New Dawn is set to deliver pulse-pounding survival horror using UE5
Established in 2008, Bloober Team is a highly experienced game development studio with over 250 exceptionally skilled individuals from all over the world. Known for its proficiency in crafting mature storylines and eerie set-pieces, Bloober Team specializes in creating spine-tingling horror titles that resonate long after the experience.
Based in Kraków, Poland, Bloober Team has become well-known for its capability to craft unnerving, intense, and innovative experiences within the horror genre. With original, mind-bending titles like Observer, Layers of Fear, and The Medium alongside the critically acclaimed remake of SILENT HILL 2 already on its resume, Bloober Team now looks to leverage its talent to deliver an all-new survival horror experience in Cronos: The New Dawn.
In the game, Bloober Team aims to deliver a pulse-pounding, third-person survival horror that throws you into the heart of a deadly struggle against overwhelming foes, all while uncovering the mysteries of a twisted time travel story. Having used Unreal Engine on previous projects, the developer chose to stick with UE and take advantage of key UE5 features such as Lumen, Nanite, and Niagara to bring its eerie atmosphere and intense action to life.
To learn more about the project, we recently caught up with Bloober Team Game Directors Jacek Zięba and Wojciech Piejko along with Technical Director Mariusz Szaflik to learn more about Cronos: The New Dawn’s unique survival horror mechanics, cross-team collaboration using Unreal Engine, and more.
In the game, Bloober Team aims to deliver a pulse-pounding, third-person survival horror that throws you into the heart of a deadly struggle against overwhelming foes, all while uncovering the mysteries of a twisted time travel story. Having used Unreal Engine on previous projects, the developer chose to stick with UE and take advantage of key UE5 features such as Lumen, Nanite, and Niagara to bring its eerie atmosphere and intense action to life.
To learn more about the project, we recently caught up with Bloober Team Game Directors Jacek Zięba and Wojciech Piejko along with Technical Director Mariusz Szaflik to learn more about Cronos: The New Dawn’s unique survival horror mechanics, cross-team collaboration using Unreal Engine, and more.
Thanks for taking the time to join us! Can you please start by telling us what Cronos: The New Dawn is all about?
Jacek Zięba, Game Director: Cronos: The New Dawn is our first survival horror game based on an original IP, set in two versions of Poland—the gritty 1980s and a dystopian future—both taking place in the Nowa Huta district of Krakow. As a third-person survival horror, your mission is simple: fight for the future by salvaging the past. Experience a world on the brink of The Change, a cataclysmic event that reshaped humanity. Then, survive a future wasteland filled with deadly monsters known as Orphans, which will test your reflexes and strategy. Expect a rich blend of sci-fi, retro aesthetics, and cassette futurism. If you’re into atmospheric storytelling, dark science fiction, and twisted timelines, this journey is made for you.
Who is the main character and what is their motivation in the game?
Wojciech Piejko, Game Director: In Cronos, you play as the Traveler—a mysterious, heavily-armored agent sent from a post-apocalyptic future by a shadowy organization known as the Collective. Your mission is to locate temporal rifts scattered across the devastated wastelands and use them to travel back to 1980s Poland. Armed with a device called the Harvester, capable of extracting souls, you must identify and rescue key individuals critical to the future’s survival. The world you traverse is unforgiving, filled with grotesque, mutated monsters called Orphans that can merge into even more dangerous forms. Surviving these horrors is essential.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
Can you please explain the risks and rewards that players will experience as they extract key people from the past?
WP: You can sometimes choose whose soul to extract. There are decisions to make everywhere, and each choice affects the story. When you extract someone’s soul, it can trigger different events in the game. At the same time, the longer you carry these souls inside you, the worse it gets. At times, you’re essentially playing as a haunted suit, haunted by the trapped souls within.
Why was Unreal Engine 5 selected for this project?
Mariusz Szaflik, Technical Director: Our team has extensive experience with Unreal Engine from previous projects, so choosing it felt like a natural decision. Over the years, we've also developed a substantial suite of tools and a custom pipeline around Unreal, which made it an even more fitting choice for this production.
Which Unreal Engine features stood out to you most during development?
MS: During the development of Cronos, we used World Partition for the first time (all our previous titles were based on World Composition). This feature allowed us to create a richer world while keeping the memory budget in check. Additionally, the background level streaming hitches we encountered in the past were greatly reduced with this approach. Lumen is also worth mentioning, as the performance improvements compared to our previous experience with it (our last game used UE5.1) are significant. These advancements have enabled our lighting artists to craft a more sophisticated and immersive horror atmosphere.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
The game offers a very visceral, tactical combat experience. How did Unreal Engine 5 help you deliver on this?
MS: The combat in Cronos is a great example of the engine's flexibility. We used our custom AI system, and integrating it into the engine alongside the existing AI system was seamless. Having full access to the engine's source code allows developers to make in-depth modifications to core systems with ease.
As we’ve come to expect from Bloober Team, immersion and atmosphere play a big part in the experience offered by Cronos: The New Dawn. Which UE5 features did you lean on to craft these aspects of this one-of-a-kind survival horror experience?
MS: When it comes to atmosphere, lighting is key—and Lumen plays a central role. It allows our level artists to create deeply oppressive, dynamic environments. Its real-time nature and flexibility enable fast iteration during level design, and its performance makes it possible to deliver high-fidelity lighting on consoles, even in 60 fps mode.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
Did the Epic Developer Community, Unreal Engine documentation, Fab marketplace, or other components of the Epic ecosystem assist you during development?
MS: Yes, both the community and Epic Pro Support have been extremely helpful whenever we encounter technical issues or face challenges with more complex engine modifications. For example, in character design, we used MetaHuman for all our human NPCs—sculpting custom heads and converting them into fully rigged MetaHumans. This significantly streamlined the workflow for both character art and animation, saving us a substantial amount of time during character setup.
Did you take advantage of access to UE’s source code?
MS: Yes, it allows us to implement in-depth engine modifications tailored to our specific needs. It’s also invaluable for debugging and understanding how things work under the hood.
Were there any learnings from the SILENT HILL 2 remake that you took over to Cronos: The New Dawn?
MS: Yes, we learned a lot during the development of the SILENT HILL 2 remake. Our prior experience with UE5 allowed us to establish more mature pipelines for object, material, and level creation. It also helped us identify and address potential issues early in development, preventing them from piling up later in the project—when making major changes becomes much more difficult.
If you had to describe UE5 in one word based on your experience building Cronos: The New Dawn, what would it be—and why?
MS: We'll go with the cliché and say the word UNREAL—because developing in it really does feel unreal.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
Resource management is a staple of the survival horror genre, but how are you enhancing this mechanic to emphasize resource management before, during, and after engaging enemies?
WP: In Cronos, resource management is crafted to be a dynamic and immersive experience that unfolds throughout every stage of combat—before, during, and after each encounter. Staying vigilant is crucial, as you must not only manage your resources wisely but also adapt to a unique challenge: enemies that can merge together mid-battle. Each merge dramatically shifts the flow of combat, exponentially increasing the difficulty and forcing you to rethink your strategy in real time.
From fast-approaching runners to heavy tank-like horrors, can you please explain your approach to enemy design based around the idea of facilitating unique encounters for the player?
JZ: In Cronos: The New Dawn, we wanted each enemy type to offer a distinct challenge that forces players to adapt their strategies, as well as to fight those who have merged. Merge is a unique mechanic for us because it represents a core gameplay element that significantly influences how players approach combat and resource management. Our goal is to make every confrontation feel unique and engaging, enhancing the immersion and intensity of the game.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
The game’s Merge mechanic is designed to escalate enemy threats and keep players on their toes. Were there any specific UE5 features that helped you get the design and execution of this mechanic just right?
MS: The merge mechanic leverages advanced Niagara features to create a visually convincing and eerily captivating effect. Niagara’s exceptional flexibility, performance, and memory efficiency—especially when handling VFX ribbons and skeletal mesh sampling—are truly impressive, providing our VFX artists with significant creative freedom.
Were there any UE5 features that helped you create and iterate on the hand-crafted environments and enemy interactions that players experience throughout the game?
MS: Yes, we use many Unreal Engine features to achieve this. For example, Control Rigs provide animation feedback when enemies are hit, and various Niagara systems bring enemy bodies to life with horror elements like tentacles and drooling. We also rely heavily on Nanite geometry to create highly detailed environments. Additionally, Lumen plays a significant role in making the environment feel realistic and vibrant.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
Did you utilize Niagara visual effects to bring the game’s environments and enemies to life?
MS: Yes, we make extensive use of Niagara. This VFX system is incredibly flexible and offers a great deal of creative freedom to experienced VFX artists. The tentacles, anomalies, and gravity platforms are all created with advanced Niagara systems, which provide rich interactivity and bring our world to life.
How does working in Unreal Engine help foster a cohesive and collaborative workflow between engineering and departments like art, design, audio etc?
MS: I suppose the fact that Unreal Engine supports revision control and integrates well with Perforce is helpful when collaborating with a large team. It ensures everyone stays in sync and reduces conflicts across disciplines. But beyond that, what really stands out is how UE enables real-time collaboration—artists, designers, and programmers can all work in the same environment, seeing changes instantly. That kind of immediate feedback loop really strengthens cross-team communication and cohesion.
We’ve heard that you were inspired by games like Resident Evil and Dead Space. How did these games influence your approach to the combat and survival elements in Cronos: The New Dawn?
JZ: Combining these influences, we aimed to deliver a game where survival isn’t just about fighting—it’s about making tough choices, managing limited resources, and feeling constantly on edge, which we hope keeps players fully engaged throughout their journey in Cronos. In terms of gameplay, Cronos is very close to the Resident Evil series, with features like resource management, tension built by limited ammunition, and atmospheric locations filled with monsters. On the other hand, Dead Space influences are clear in the game’s mood, protagonist, and intense, brutal encounters with creatures, using a unique arsenal and environment.
Image courtesy of © 2025 Bloober Team S.A.
Some of the environments from Cronos: The New Dawn are based on locations near to the Bloober offices. Does it change the way you feel about the game when it's inspired by places so close to home?
JZ: We feel a deeper connection to the world of Cronos knowing that it’s rooted in Nowa Huta—a district of Kraków, our hometown. There’s something both surreal and deeply rewarding about seeing familiar places and landmarks transformed through a sci-fi lens.
Thank you for joining us! Where should people go to learn more about Cronos: The New Dawn?
WP: The best way to stay updated and learn more about the game is through our official social channels including Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, and Discord.