Saturnalia
Santa Ragione · 2023 · Adventure, Action-Adventure, Exploration, Stylized, Third Person
PC
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About Saturnalia
✦ AI summary
Play as four interconnected characters unraveling an ancient Sardinian curse through a constantly reshaping village maze where death triggers a complete redesign and roguelite progression keeps your story momentum. Each character wields unique abilities to solve deeply narrative-woven puzzles, manage scarce resources, and uncover multiple endings across a haunting adventure inspired by stop-motion horror aesthetics.
A third-person horror adventure where you play as four characters, experiencing an intergenerational storyline tied to the haunting traditions of an ancient village in Sardinia, Italy, a region rich with unique folklore…
The village itself is an elaborate maze with no two iterations being precisely the same—you will have to explore and solve the mysteries of the game largely unguided.
Die, and watch the village reconfigure itself into a new form. Solve puzzles and open shortcuts to new areas with tools and items you find along the way, unlocking every piece of the story with different characters, each with its own power and suited for another aspect of exploration and investigation.
A playthrough takes approximately 10 hours, leading to one of several potential endings.
The village itself is an elaborate maze with no two iterations being precisely the same—you will have to explore and solve the mysteries of the game largely unguided.
Die, and watch the village reconfigure itself into a new form. Solve puzzles and open shortcuts to new areas with tools and items you find along the way, unlocking every piece of the story with different characters, each with its own power and suited for another aspect of exploration and investigation.
Game Features
- The village structure changes each time all your characters die
- Discover characters' special abilities, use tools and consumables to open shortcuts
- Keep narrative and puzzle progress across game-overs (roguelite)
- Manage your supply of matches to help your sight and solve puzzles
- Non-linear progression, dynamic and adaptive narrative
- Investigate the ritual at the heart of the game and use what you find to stop it
- Puzzles deeply integrated with the game world and narrative (not abstract)
- Artwork and animations inspired by stop-motion and rotoscoping film techniques
Info
A playthrough takes approximately 10 hours, leading to one of several potential endings.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Played this when it came out on the Epic Games store, bought here on Steam to support the devs. Wonderful giallo folk horror with a truly unique vibe - it's well worth your time.5 found this helpful
Good, creepy, queer, italian3 found this helpful
The style in this is strong enough that it makes me disappointed that it's somewhat lacking in substance. It has a lot of good in it but it doesn't feel fully formed. Everything from characters (likeable but not deep enough to really demand narrative gravity), to the monster (threatening in design but not memorable in concept or spectacle), to ideas like the town shifting every time you get a gameover (I never got a real gameover once, but my character did get stuck under the map at one point, and at some points you just have to manually shift the town because you run out of resources), to just the general level of jank that the game has (plenty) make this feel like a minor game in my eyes. And rather than phrase that as a criticism, I think what I really feel is that I like the game enough and I admire all the things it's trying to do and be that I wish I could see a fully formed, major version of it. I wish I could see this Dario Argento visual style and a town-centric mystery horror narrative like this on the scale of like, [i]Pathologic[/i]. But I appreciate and really enjoyed the game that the devs made, which is still quite good, even if it doesn't rise to great heights. I …2 found this helpful
I'm so glad I played this. You know how sometimes you have a brain itch that needs to be scratched with good thinking? This game does that. It's so satisfyingly challenging but every time I was going to give up I ended up figuring things out. Highly recommend if you don't mind being chased and need a good game to get you thinking.
One of a kind little horror game. Sharp story, great aesthetic, with unique inspirations that make it stand out among the crowd. Really enjoyed the game's clue management system and non-linear progression, kept the exploration interesting and often left just enough room/time for reflection on the mystery at the heart of the game. Pick it up on sale!
https://youtu.be/da2fx1fePDg Intentionally creepy and off putting the visual style and unreliable city layout provides a unique mix of elements.
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