Copyright GamesRadar+
You don't need to do much digging to see that Bloober Team is a very different studio in 2025 than it was five years ago. Its newly-forged reputation has cemented it one of the most respected studios on the scene, and after pulling off a staggering 180 in the eyes of hyper-critical genre fans, I'm fascinated by the transformation. With two acclaimed survival horror games launched in the last calendar year – Silent Hill 2 Remake courtesy of Konami, and its latest in-house IP, Cronos: The New Dawn – it speaks to an exciting new future for the Polish developer. Cronos' lead writer Grzegorz Like and co-director Jacek Ziȩba should know. They've been at Bloober Team each step of the way, from 2021's The Medium to its Layers of Fear remaster and beyond. Sitting down to talk about the studio's winning streak reveals how hard-won these successes have been. "We tried to approach each of our games as a learning experience," Like says. "We experiment a lot, and I guess now we're in the era of reaping the fruits of those experiments." If at first you don't succeed... The adage that there is always room for improvement is one that Bloober Team takes seriously. It welcomes its own evolution, grappling with the mixed reception to its games over the years that have seen some earmarked among the best horror games while others fall closer to infamy – most notably regarding its portrayal of mental health in psychological horror game Blair Witch. Perhaps the most fascinating evolution of all is how Bloober Team went from creating atmospheric, highly immersive horror walking sims like Layers of Fear to the dense survival horror mechanics of something like Cronos: The New Dawn. "People tend to think that [change] happened overnight, while we were working on Silent Hill," Like says. But even before Cronos, Bloober had a lot to prove. He references the dubious reactions – from fans and critics alike – to the news that it had been chosen to develop Silent Hill 2 Remake, and how that experience drove Bloober to prove naysayers wrong. Cronos is the result of "years spent learning from our own shortcomings and overcoming the limitations we had," Like continues. "Not only in terms of know-how, but in technology and budget." Essentially, Bloober's road to victory can be charted through its very own roster. Silent Hill 2 proved that Bloober had the skill and knowledge to pull off combat-oriented survival horror (as well as subtlety over shock value when it comes to psychological terror), and it already had a proven track record of strong storytelling. Ziȩba describes Cronos as "the full package" – more interactive than the comparatively "easy" exploration-based gameplay of Layers of Fear, but never at the expense of the narrative and worldbuilding that Bloober fans have come to expect following games like The Medium. In fact, The Medium is perhaps the game that, despite being critiqued for its approach to sensitive themes, delivered the strongest hint of Bloober Team's ambition to break free from its walking sim roots. I loved picking out the little nods to Resident Evil's bolt cutters, the fixed camera angles, other little touches furnishing the studio's respect for the genre, and it sounds like it was a formative project for Bloober in more ways than mere homage. "We pushed the bar a little further, having a dialog system and other stuff, but also learned a lot – how to create cut scenes, how to scare players – and how maybe not to do that," Ziȩba admits. "After that, we thought, okay, we are ready to fulfill our other dream: to create our own survival horror." That survival horror game wasn't Silent Hill 2 Remake, but Cronos: The New Dawn. It's alive! The ideas came in hot and fast, like bursts of arterial blood – "let's go sci fi, heavy sci fi – we've never been there, because The Observer was like cyberpunk, but still something different" – but all good things take time. "I don't think Cronos would have been possible five years ago, eight years ago. The team wasn't ready," Ziȩba says, echoing Like's comments on its lack of expertise at the time. Bloober also wanted to push the boat out from the heavier, potentially dicey themes it handled previously. "We never want to take a step back – [the game] would still be serious, but it can be more cryptic, maybe something that will connect with more people because it's more general." That more generalized aperture also lends itself well to survival horror as a subgenre. "We lean more into Resident Evil [in Cronos: The New Dawn] compared to Silent Hill," Ziȩba says, referencing Resident Evil 2 Remake as a key touchstone in terms of the action experience it aimed to emulate while acknowledging all the Dead Space comparisons ("we're not trying to be 'Dead Space at home'," Like jokes). It's no surprise, then, that players are giving Cronos the same incisive treatment it bestows upon the greats. Survival horror fans love to delve into the nitty-gritty, from environmental storytelling to monster design, because the genre was made for devouring piece by piece, over and over again. "I'm seeing videos like 'Cronos lore, one hour,' and I'm a bit afraid to watch that," Ziȩba laughs. "But that was the intention – for people to do that, to create. Survival horror fans really, really understand this game, and we made this game for them." Again, though, Bloober was met with a little bit of initial pushback. "A lot of our fans were kind of afraid when we told them that it'll be play-heavy and challenging and all that," Like says, recalling worries that Bloober had "lost its storytelling" by making a classical survival horror game. "But it's all there, and it shows from the reactions on the internet. We had this storytellers edge, and now we needed to balance it with action." Cronos is a melting pot of liquid gold, comprising all the lessons Bloober has learned in its lifetime and creating something new. "Now, we feel we are the full package," says Ziȩba. "Now, we can do mostly anything we want – it can still be an engaging story, have interesting visuals, and have engaging gameplay." Could this mean that beyond the upcoming Silent Hill 1 remake being handled by a separate team at Bloober, and beyond the mysterious unannounced Nintendo-exclusive horror game, Cronos has scope beyond The New Dawn? Could this, potentially, be Bloober's very own franchised horror game? The duo don't give up the goods that easily, of course, but it's worth a shot. "The lore and the world we created give us an opportunity to do whatever we want," Ziȩba says neatly. Like is similarly careful yet passionate. "This world is so interesting. It wasn't created from absolute ground zero, because it's rooted in real history," he hints at nothing in particular, speaking of Cronos' setting in Nowa Huta, Krakow, as well as the malleability of its time-traveling sci-fi framework. "It's filled with things that just excite us. And also, you know some of the fans are getting frustrated that they didn't have all the answers," Like says sympathetically. "We don't want that. We want them satisfied." It's neither a confirmation nor an outright denial, but it's one thing for sure: assurance from Bloober Team itself that it's not going anywhere anytime soon – though that melting pot of ideas may need upgrading to a vat.
