Polish studio Bloober Team is rolling out more details about its upcoming survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn, and one fascinating new feature acts as a new mile marker for how far the Layers of Fear studio has come. Instead of returning to the company's environmental storytelling roots, Bloober is making a survival horror game more technically ambitious than 2024's remake of Silent Hill 2.As in Silent Hill 2, players explore a nightmarish world with limited ammo and gangs of monstrous enemies stalking their every move—but this time, the enemies aren't just hunting the player, but also other enemy corpses. The monsters absorb energy from downed bodies to evolve into greater threats, creating a combat loop where players don't just need to juggle threats coming in from all sides, but also keep an eye on the enemies they kill so they don't become food for the next enemy that spawns.Making a system like this juggles a number of unique disciplines—level design, AI programming, combat design, and more. If Bloober had years and years of experience making survival horror games, this might be expected. If the team inside Bloober making Silent Hill 2 started on Cronos after shipping the remake, it would feel like a natural evolution.But Cronos was made in parallel with Silent Hill 2. That means the developers—led by co-directors Jacek Zieba and Wojciech Piejko—could share insights with their colleagues, but were otherwise still learning how to implement survival horror combat for the first time.Related:What made that process possible? According to Zieba and Piejko, who we spoke with at the 2025 Game Developers Conference, a key factor for success was a trend companies have been pushing back on since the end of COVID-19 lockdown: remote hiring.Without talent from across Poland—and even outside the country—the pair say Cronos' unique combat wouldn't be the same.Complex combat in Cronos calls for creative collaboratorsLike Observer and The Medium, Cronos: The New Dawn is set in Bloober's hometown of Krakow, this time sending players on a time travel adventure taking them from Soviet rule in the 1980s to an apocalyptic hellscape in a future ravaged by an event called "The Change."As Zieba and Piejko walked through a private demo of Cronos at GDC, the pair broke down the specific design decisions that prop up the combat loop. The aforementioned harvesting mechanic at the heart of the enemy AI systems allows for multiple evolutions. Enemies don't just get stronger, they can also learn new attack patterns and mutate into new character models. The pair showed off how basic enemies have two tiers of evolution, meaning players who can't knock down every enemy will face an entirely new kind of monster that could turn the tide in a fight.Related:Image via Bloober Team.The pair explained that gunplay and traversal in Cronos isn't just an updated version of what Bloober made in Silent Hill 2. Player movement and shooting is meant to mimic what is often referred to as the "tank controls" of survival horror games from the late '90s and early 2000s. These games limited player movement, slowed down aiming, and used restrictive camera angles to make it harder to spot enemies at a distance.Though novel for their time, advancements in video game combat as a whole make "tank controls" a less appealing experience for most modern players. To recreate that sensation without relying on decades-old restrictions, Bloober made two key design decisions. The more subtle one was to mandate that guns not fire with a simple trigger press. They need to be charged up, giving enemies time to close the gap.The more surprising choice—one that greatly diverges from Silent Hill 2—was to not give players a "dodge" button. Players instead are given a resource-dependent flamethrower burst that can push enemies away or eliminate dead bodies used for power-ups. The resource-juggling is familiar to survival horror, but denying players a dodge button goes against recent trends. None of this, the pair said, could be done without Bloober increasing headcount and seeking out developers with specific skills.Related:"We bolster a team [with] specific people," said Zieba, noting that Bloober hired a dedicated "gunsmith" whose sole job would be making the charge-heavy guns. "He opened this door—it was easier for us to start [making the game]."Speaking of opening doors, it was Piejko who explained Bloober could only hire some of these specialists because the company still allowed for remote work. "It's easier to get better specialists who love survival horror like us," he said. Zieba said the studio at large still operates in a "hybrid" mode. "But for some of them, we know there is no going back," he said. "There is no reason to go back because we are stronger because of it."You can't make good games without the right peopleBloober Team's policy of continuing to allow for remote work offers a clear example of what CEO Piotr Babieno meant when he spoke to Game Developer about the process of sustainably growing a "safe" studio specializing in single-player horror games. If your studio is breaking into a new genre with complex systems no one on your team has experience with, you'll need to hire externally. And if the number of people in video games with that kind of experience isn't that high, you'll need to meet them where they're at—literally.This doesn't mean remote work is the right solution for every company. But even if you want your workers coming into the office, Bloober's approach offers a clear-cut example of what you can achieve when you seek out developers with specific skills and work within their needs.If your studio is breaking genre ground, or making a game larger than it ever has before, you're going to need talented people. And whether those people need a remote workstation, flexible hours to take care of their families, or even extra support for the cost and time of commuting into the office, meeting their needs—and not demanding they accommodate to yours—can put you on the path to making a Cronos all of your own.Game Developer and Game Developers Conference are sibling organizations under Informa Tech.