Bloober Team has read the nasty tweets and it's seen the videos in which skeptics brace for disappointment; it hasn't ignored the pessimism. The Polish, horror-obsessed studio even admits it's made "shitty" games in the past. Now, it's out to prove Silent Hill 2 Remake wasn't a one-hit wonder built from a trustworthy, pre-existing blueprint. Speaking with Bloober Team less than 24 hours after its newest horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn, was revealed during the latest Xbox Partner Preview, and just two weeks after the Silent Hill 2 Remake parade of praise kicked off, I learned the studio's next project is intended to reinforce a newly emerging narrative: the Bloober Team redemption arc.

"We don't want to make a similar game [to Silent Hill 2]," director/designer Wojciech Piejko told me during an interview focused on the team's first post-Silent Hill project, which began to take shape a few months after The Medium was released in 2021. Though Cronos: The New Dawn and Silent Hill 2 Remake were being developed on overlapping timelines, they come from largely different teams within the studio and are meant to feel like "different pizzas with different toppings--both delicious," he said with a laugh. Silent Hill 2 Remake was better than most seemed to expect, but Cronos: The New Dawn seeks to prove they can build something special from scratch, too.

The game centers on The Traveler, a mysterious person who moves through timelines. On one end is a future ravaged by a pandemic and inhabited by monstrous mutants. On the other end is communist Poland circa the 1980s. The Traveler is tasked with moving backward through time to rescue VIPs who didn't survive, disrupting the timeline to bring them into the future where they may be able to help. If it sounds like things will get wonky in that classic time-travel way, I'd bet you're right. The duo told me the game is inspired by Netflix's Dark, a magnificent series that often felt like an oddly welcome headache for those trying to make sense of its elaborate plot.