We were pleased to see Bloober Team pop up at last month's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase with the announcement that its upcoming sci-fi survival horror Cronos: The New Dawn will also be arriving on Switch 2 on 5th September. It's nice to see a Nintendo system treated to the same scares as the other big players in the industry and, as it turns out, the developer has big plans to keep the relationship rolling in the future.
In a new interview with The Game Business, Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno said that he's a huge Nintendo fan, so bringing Cronos to Switch 2 is an attempt to make his "personal dreams come true". Citing the likes of Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4 ("the most important horrors," according to Babieno), the CEO referred to the GameCube's horror scene as a "gold time for Nintendo fans" — something he's keen to bring back.
"In some ways, we would like to be the one to open a new chapter for Nintendo right now," Babieno said of bringing horror games to Switch 2. "We have some plans," he teased, "We are not able to share our vision for the future yet. But definitely Nintendo fans could take a look at Bloober Team".
As the team behind last year's critically acclaimed Silent Hill 2 remake, this is an exciting prospect. Throw on top the solid previews so far of Cronos: The New Dawn, and our overall good time going hands-on with the Switch 2 version at Gamescom, and we're even more enthused by the mere prospect of more chills and thrills coming our way from the company.
But that's not to say any future Bloober Team plans would necessarily be 'more of the same'. Babieno hinted to The Game Business that the studio already has its eye on the strange mid-point between horror and cosy gaming that Nintendo has struck gold on in the past, with Luigi's Mansion being a stand-out example. "What Kono-san did with this title was pretty impressive," Babieno said of the ghost-busting GameCube launch title, "And I believe that there is a huge possibility to repeat such an idea in the future".
A Bloober Team survival horror with Luigi's Mansion as a touchstone? Count us in! The CEO even drew a comparison between his studio and the Big N in terms of how the team is structured, particularly when it comes to avoiding layoffs for the greater good of the company's future projects (Bloober Team has been one of the few studios that hasn't seen staff cuts in recent years). “I believe that if we have teams that are making great games and understand our DNA, it's much easier to create new projects," Babieno said in the same interview. "I think that this is another parallel with Nintendo, because [it has] a similar spirit of how we are trying to do things".
We have just one week to go before Cronos: The New Dawn arrives on Switch 2. It's a game full of gruesome darkness, but let's hope that the future is as bright as Babieno imagines.