Cronos: The New Dawn was provided by Bloober Team for review. Thank you!
Developer Bloober Team has been undeniably one of the best horror studios around. They started making a name for themselves in the space with Layers of Fear in 2016, and have increased their notoriety steadily with Observer and Blair Witch, culminating with the hyped release of the Silent Hill 2 remake. Now, Bloober is getting back to self-publishing with a brand new IP: Cronos: The New Dawn. It first got my attention with its visual similarities to Dead Space, which I love, but I was completely pulled in thanks to the gorgeous visuals, intriguing story, creepy atmosphere, and slower-paced gameplay.
Even with the slower start, the story hooked me in relatively quickly. We play as The Traveler, who is going to different locations on a desolate Earth, looking for rifts to extract the souls of people from the past. The world was devastated by a mysterious plague that morphed humans into grotesque monsters that have essentially taken over the planet. Our goal is to uncover the origins of this pandemic-induced apocolypse, and we must do it, such is our calling.
Right off the bat, I have to say that this kind of story is right up my alley. Put in a sci-fi, futuristic aesthetic and apocalyptic scenario with a devastated world, and I am all in. Cronos: The New Dawn is a clear example of the exact type of story I love. We get glimpses into the past to piece together what caused this pandemic, interact with different crazy-ish individuals, and make some choices that affect how we progress. It isn't as emotionally-charged as it could be, since this giant spherical mask covers our face, but that didn't detract from the joy I had continuing the tale and reading the lore in passing logs.
While the story completely gripped me, there's just one part that I found hard to enjoy. Throughout Cronos, there will be times when we have discussions with another traveler, and hearing both of them talking in their raspy robotic voices is just a little too jarring for me. The one-off voice lines from our protagonist, and when they talk to other humans, are not that bad, but something about the discussion where both have this type of voice is just a little too much for me. It didn't harm the overall experience, but it's worth mentioning.
Visually, all I can really say is wow. Bloober Team has stepped up their game and created an extremely creepy and tense world that I found myself needing to take time to get through just because I didn't know what would come next. The atmosphere exudes this unnerving feeling, with grotesque pulsating flesh across the walls and ceilings, floating debris with anomalies disrupting gravity, and destruction as far as the eye can see, all cloaked in the darkness illuminated only by the light on your shoulder. It works in tandem with the soundtrack, which can both creep me out more and pump me up in fights. It's just fantastic through and through.
I was a little worried that, with the emphasis on combat, Cronos would feel more like a thriller over the horror experience I had hoped. I am happy to say that fear is unfounded. Even with third-person combat, crafting, and more action-oriented mechanics, there are enough moments to keep that horror focus intact. Enemies can pop out of the flesh, bodies can come to life, random sounds, the necessity of walking slow, and the atmosphere all work together to keep tensions high.
We have a lot of time to admire the world of Cronos due to how necessary it really is to take your time, go slow, and be as careful as possible. There could be enemies lurking around every corner, and with how scarce resources and ammo are, we have to be careful and conserve everything we have. There are some well-placed resources here and there, and exploration is rewarded nicely with extra ammo, crafting materials, and currency. Taking time to really scan and find the chain-locked doors and cracks in the wall, we can slip through, which will make or break future encounters.
Luckily, getting into combat is still enjoyable, but we can't just let loose. All of the enemies we come across can easily kill us if we aren't careful, and if we are just too willing to use our ammo, we will run out very quickly. So, we have to take our time, shoot for specific areas, like the legs, to make them fall over, and melee attack. We need to be careful with our melee attacks, since enemies will sometimes not flinch from being punched or stomped, so timing and knowing when to move away to not be hit by their spit or arms.
On top of that, we have to also be very aware of our surroundings. Not only can it be helpful, with explosive barrels that can help disperse multiple enemies or deal some big damage to tougher foes, but enemies can merge with their fallen brethren and become significantly stronger. They can merge up to three times, and letting them merge can ultimately lead to our downfall. To combat this, we have a capsule to shoot on the ground that burns bodies around us. Like the rest of our resources, this is limited, and while we can get them more easily compared to the rest of the resources, we still need to be careful.
In general, I do enjoy combat; it's tense and adds to the appeal of Cronos, but it can get frustrating in some instances. There are a few fights that come to mind where I have to fight enemies that have merged once already, and I have to defeat them in very small spaces. Sometimes, the camera positioning got in my way, while others it was just difficult to manage multiple foes, or more powerful ones, and not die. These deaths felt unfair, and with some of them bringing me far back to a previous save point when I perished, I started to feel frustrated. This didn't happen super often, and it wasn't enough for me to close the game and take a break, but it was still there and still annoying.
To help us, we can use those crafting materials and currency to craft, upgrade, or purchase some necessary items. The upgrades are helpful, especially increasing inventory items, but it does take a while to upgrade weapons. With how necessary the currency is for getting items when we need to and upgrading, I regularly found myself a little short of getting the upgrades I wanted. This is one of the few games where I consistently found a use for the assortment of weapons I had, and that's an achievement in itself, but it also meant I had more upgrades that I wanted to make, which strained my wallet.
However, I would say this strain and worry are a big part of what makes Cronos: The New Dawn so appealing. It's supposed to be tense and difficult, while also forcing us to strategize to conserve what we have and make smart choices to keep us from dying. While some of the fights can get too difficult and teeter on frustrating, it never stopped me from wanting to keep playing.
When I first loaded Cronos up on the Steam Deck, I was a little worried. Despite it not showing up on the Steam store page, it does have a native Linux build, which is the default on the Deck. However, the game is not great in this build. I could just barely hit 30 FPS in closed-off areas on the lowest settings, and there were almost no upscaling options apart from TSR. This felt off to me, especially since the game will be releasing on the Nintendo Switch 2 as well. However, I am happy to say we can fix it, and it's actually way more playable on the Deck than I initially thought.
The fix actually just comes from forcing the Proton compatibility layer and using the Windows version instead of the native Linux build. I genuinely had no idea the Linux build even existed due to it only showing the Windows icon on the Steam store page, so I am glad I tried it. It ends up making a huge difference, with closed-off areas hitting almost 50 FPS on Very Low settings, staying above 30 FPS the whole time, no matter what, and giving us options for the rest of the upscalers we could use.
As I was writing the review, the game got a day 1 patch, which did help performance on the Linux build. Both FSR and XeSS are still not showing up, but it's more playable out of the box on Very Low settings.
Now, with the game working as intended, I can also say it's actually very playable on the Steam Deck. However, there's only one way to play it. Ultimately, only the Very Low preset of Cronos works on the Deck, with anything above getting the framerate pummeled in more open areas. Even with upscaling turned on with the low-quality preset, or all the advanced settings set to Low or off, framerate can't hit 30. The only way to play on the Steam Deck is using the Very Low preset; that's it.
You can turn FSR or XeSS upscaling on, but it doesn't change the visuals or performance much. They all look relatively the same, and my guess is that the Very Low preset is a specially made one with pre-defined settings that we can't change. Still, I would say the game looks pretty wonderful at this preset, and still gives that creepy atmosphere that defines Cronos. There are some fluctuations in performance when loading in new areas and running through crowded ones, but it generally sticks above 30 with battery drain ranging from 14W to 19W.
However, it isn't all perfect. Despite the better performance, I still encountered crashes here and there. Reloading the game and going through the same scenes seemed to fix it, but I would say this is the result of RAM usage. Since we can go back and play through the scene without crashes, I would consider it playable.
I also tried out the in-game frame generation to see if that would help performance at all, but it only made things significantly worse. It became stuttery with major input lag and completely unplayable. On the other hand, Lossless Scaling is significantly better. It's smoother, has almost no extra input lag, and doesn't feel stuttery at all. Some of the slowdowns feel more pronounced, but to fix this, I disabled the framerate limit and changed the screen refresh rate to 60. This made the issues less prominent and lowered battery drain. They were still there, but I didn't feel the slowdowns as much.
The game still feels great at 30 FPS, and I wouldn't say Lossless Scaling is necessary, but it's a nice option to have. Having Lossless Scaling on does also make some of the ghosting feel more noticeable, with some scenes showing a weird bubble effect around us. It's not enough to drive me crazy, but it's definitely there. This effect gets worse at 3x and 4x, along with more input lag, so I recommend keeping it at 2x for the best experience with frame generation. However, playing at 30 FPS with no Lossless Scaling will still be more stable overall, so I personally recommend that.
Still, in the end, I am pleased to say that Cronos is very playable on the Steam Deck one way or another, and I recommend it, even with some possible crashes here and there. I didn't find one that was difficult to get back to, and I passed right through on the second try. Yes, it is annoying, but if you are someone who only has a Steam Deck to play games or just want to play in bed here and there, it's perfect.
There is a full on accessibility tab, which has options for quick time events, vibration intensity, aim assist, and a center dot to combat motion sickness. There's also a color blind mode for Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, and Protanopia, and a Dyslexic font style. Apart from those, we can change the interaction indicator styler, item shader, reticle settings, HUD elements, language, subtitles, and transcription details with text size, options for tutorials and loading hints, and audio sliders.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has both cloud saves and controller support. The game does have HDR and seems to recognize the OLED screen, but it doesn't show up in the quick settings as enabled. Just make sure your Screen Mode is set to Fullscreen or Borderless if you want to use HDR.
Cronos: The New Dawn has quickly become one of my favorite horror games. The story completely hit me, and I loved the sci-fi, futuristic, apocalyptic vibes throughout. The general gameplay, while a bit aggravating at times, feels strategic to make sure we have all the resources and ammo we need, and to make sure we don't die. The visuals and soundtrack just hit, and they ultimately work together to create a creepy, atmospheric, and horror-inducing experience that rarely lets up. This is survival horror at its finest.
On top of that, the game runs much better on the Steam Deck than I expected. It can hold 30 FPS while still looking decent, and is one of the only games I have found frame generation (through Lossless Scaling) to be worthwhile and enhance the experience. All in all, this is a fantastic game to take on the go, and I can't recommend it enough!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Cronos: The New Dawn is a gorgeous survival-horror experience that is exactly what I hoped for and more, and it's surprisingly playable on the Steam Deck.
