Bloober Team’s post-apocalyptic survival horror game is getting a second chapter, and it swaps the lead. Cronos: Lazarus is a paid story expansion for Cronos: The New Dawn that moves the camera off the Traveler and onto the Warden, the character the base game slowly reveals to be the Pathfinder in disguise. The pitch is a faster, louder version of the same world, built by Bloober Team alongside PixelAnt Games.
Quick answer: Lazarus is a story DLC for Cronos: The New Dawn, starring the Warden, with a more aggressive combat kit. It is due in Fall 2026 and requires the base game.
Who you play in Cronos: Lazarus
New Dawn’s wastelands are seen through the eyes of a Pathfinder who once served loyally, now midway through the transformation into the Warden encountered in the main campaign. Cut off from the Collective, he has made the Terminal his refuge and spends every hour trying to revive a lost Essence he refuses to abandon. The Collective must never discover the mission behind that fixation.
Bloober Team frames the expansion as missing lore rather than a side story, covering the Warden’s evolution and secrets the Collective kept buried. The studio has said he became the most requested character from the base game, which is why the expansion is built around him instead of a new face.
He is not in peak condition. Years of survival have left him scarred and damaged, and the writing leans on that, so the power fantasy is tempered by a body that is already failing. The tagline on the end card sums up the arc bluntly: “DEFY THE CALLING. BRING HER BACK.”
Release window and platforms for the Cronos: The New Dawn DLC
The expansion carries a Fall 2026 window, announced in June 2026 and repeated on the closing card of the gameplay presentation. Bloober Team has not locked a specific day, and the Steam listing still reads “To be announced” for the release date, so treat the season as the only firm commitment.
| Platform | Storefront | Window |
|---|---|---|
| PC | Steam, Epic Games Store | Fall 2026 |
| PlayStation 5 | PlayStation Store | Fall 2026 |
| Xbox Series X|S | Microsoft Store | Fall 2026 |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | Nintendo eShop | Fall 2026 |
Cronos: The New Dawn itself launched on 5 September 2025 and is already out on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PC, so you do not need to wait to start the story. The base game has also been discounted by up to 45 percent, a promotion pushed directly at the end of the gameplay video.
Lazarus is downloadable content, not a standalone release. It will not run without Cronos: The New Dawn installed on the same platform.
The Warden’s combat kit
The base game asked you to ration ammo and pick fights carefully. The expansion pulls in the other direction, handing you Pathfinder-grade equipment and asking you to hold ground against pressure. Four tools carry most of the four-minute presentation.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Gladius Pistol | Piercing bullets that pass through several enemies at once |
| Phase dash | Short holographic teleport that breaks contact with an attacker |
| Decoy clone | Leaves a copy behind and turns you briefly invisible to enemies |
| Tracker Support | Marks a target and calls a strike on that spot |
Tracker Support has the most explicit rules attached to it. You aim your weapon and press R3 to enter Marker Mode, then press R2 again to place a marker, and the Tracker fires at the marked location. Markers sit on a short cooldown, so you cannot chain strikes back to back. In the footage it is used on a giant creature fused into a wall, the kind of target that will not fall to a pistol.
A shotgun handles closer work, and thrown explosives cover stairwells and chokepoints. Burning corpses still matters, too: in the base game, enemies that are not disposed of by fire can merge with nearby bodies and absorb their abilities.
The new hunter chasing the Warden
You can no longer treat the Terminal as a refuge. A newly introduced hunter now stalks you with one assignment: locate and kill you. Bloober Team calls the enemy relentless and highly adaptive, with enough strength to face the Warden in a direct brawl; confrontations with it grow into expansive, cinematic set pieces.
That pursuer is the spine of the expansion. Everything else in the kit, from the decoy to the dash, reads as a counter to something that can keep pace with you rather than a way to farm ordinary Orphans.
Objectives, environments and traversal
The HUD keeps a short objective list in the top-left corner, alongside a crosshair, an ammo counter, and a heart rate monitor in the bottom-left. Four objectives appear during the presentation, and they give a decent read on the shape of a chapter.
- Find an Energy Converter
- Reach the Quarantine Zone
- Follow the Traveler’s Trail
- Survive the Horde, with the instruction to stay alive until the assault is over
Energy is a visible pickup, with one collection showing “Energy x600” on screen. Locations run from dusty corridors with Polish signage and a ruined courtyard of oversized statues to green-lit sewer pipes, red-lit hallways, and open cave systems. Fleshy growths spread across walls and act as both scenery and targets, spawning crawling enemies when disturbed.
Movement is not purely combat-focused. The Warden pushes a heavy metal crate to open a route through a broken wall and shoots an explosive red barrel to clear a blocked corridor, so basic environmental puzzles still sit between fights.
There is also a reality-glitch effect, where the screen stutters and drops the Warden into a different ruined area before snapping him back to where he was standing. Given the base game’s time-travel structure, it fits, though the expansion has not explained the mechanic yet.
PC requirements and content rating
The expansion is single-player only, ships with English interface, full audio, and subtitles, and supports Family Sharing. The listed minimum PC specifications match a machine that can already run the base game.
| Component | Minimum |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 x64 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-8400F or i5-8600K, AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| Memory | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics | GeForce GTX 1080, Radeon RX 5700-XT, or Intel Arc A770 |
| DirectX | Version 12 |
| Storage | 30 GB available space |
The ESRB has rated it Mature 17+ for Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, and Strong Language. Bloober Team’s own content warning flags frequent violence or gore and general mature content.
Until a firm date lands, the safest way to hear about it first is a wishlist on your storefront of choice, which triggers a notification the moment the DLC goes live. Anyone who has not finished Cronos: The New Dawn has a reason to do so now, since Lazarus assumes you already know who the Warden turns out to be.
