‘Saturnalia’ Review: The Best Horror Game For Halloween 2022, And Beyond

Games ‘Saturnalia’ Review: The Best Horror Game For Halloween 2022, And Beyond Matt Gardner Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A British writer covering indie and retro gaming, esports, and more. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 30, 2022, 05:57am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Despite its quirks, ‘Saturnalia’ may be the best horror game of 2022. Santa Ragione Before Saturnalia , I couldn’t think of anything more exciting than exploring the winding, beautiful alleys of European cities like Dubrovnik, Valletta, Rome, or Prague. After Saturnalia , I’ve decided to stay in the U.

K. for the next few years, only leaving the house during daylight hours, with a backpack full of torches just in case it gets cloudy, and solely moving in a group of 16 or more heavily armed people. From its earliest trailers, Saturnalia promised nothing short of an eccentric spookfest.

Despite bursting at the seams with Lynchian vibes–surreal themes, regular detective work, dream-like happenings, hauntingly gorgeous soundtrack, and then some–Italian indie studio Santa Ragione has managed to deliver an entirely unique escapade. Few games get under your skin quite like Saturnalia ; even fewer are so compulsive that you’ll break through any personal mental barriers you have and push on, learn more, solve puzzles, and avoid being caught by the scuttling, awful creature that stalks the small, claustrophobic town and–oh god–you can’t even trust the buildings around you. Set in Sardinia in 1989, Saturnalia initially places you in the shoes of Anita, a young woman driving a Fiat 500 across an endless bridge toward the fictional village of Gravoi.

It’s December 21, the winter solstice and longest night of the year, and the locals are celebrating the Feast of Saint Lucia. You’re pregnant, and hoping to tell your lover–Damiano, a married man–that you plan to keep your baby. MORE FOR YOU Meet The Unknown Immigrant Billionaire Betting Her Fortune To Take On Musk In Space Former U.

K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ Phone Allegedly Hacked By Kremlin Spies: Report Juventus Beat Lecce Thanks To Nicolo Fagioli After He Fought To Stay At The Club Initially, everything feels relatively safe, quaint, and vaguely familiar–but dark and moody, spectacularly lit with single-color neon lighting caused by the matches you use for light, or to ignite various small bonfires. The game’s weird mixture of art styles–where your surroundings are smooth and unfettered, but your character is animated in a skittish, low-def way, almost vibrating with textures–shouldn’t work, but it does.

You never feel part of your surroundings, but that’s the whole point: you’re an outsider. After being inexplicably locked out of the church by locals, whose outlines you only glimpse in the distance, you explore your labyrinthine locale, uncovering small tidbits of knowledge and piecing together Gravoi’s oddly charming layout. Eventually, mass finishes and you’re able to get into the church in the hope you’ll meet your lover; instead, something much more wicked your way comes.

Your unlucky fate isn’t grisly, but that doesn’t make it easy to stomach. Santa Ragione Practically laughed off by Anita right up until the inevitable point it swoops in to capture her and the screen cuts to black, the masked creature initially seems human. It chains her to a makeshift altar made of steel, wood, and rocks.

Luckily, you’ve got help from three other people who are also looking for answers in Gravoi–and together, try to escape. After Anita’s capture, you’re introduced to photographer Paul, Anita’s friend who’s defying strict instructions not to return to Gravoi, hoping to find information about his birth parents. Soon, you meet Sergio, a gay man once exiled from the town, only to return to care for his father.

Finally, Claudia, a teenager haunted by the suicide of her aunt and the town’s subsequent denial and silence over the tragedy, wants to leave the area forever. Working together, using scant clues, a relatively poor grasp of the area’s map boards, and by using unique character abilities (a map, camera, phone, and smaller stature), you dig deeper into Gravoi’s secrets. But the monster will get you.

It picks you off, one by one. You’ll get trapped in a dead end, or sacrifice yourself to lead it away from your group, or just get so freaked out that you’ll freeze in fear. Then it’ll get everyone else.

Maps are helpful—until the town’s layout changes completely. Santa Ragione Then everything starts again. The village is completely reconfigured.

This is Saturnalia ’s masterstroke: you really can’t trust the buildings around you. Just when you think you’ve made progress, it pulls the rug out from underneath you. Before everything kicks off, the game explains this is the way it’s meant to be played.

A softer-touch adventure mode keeps the initial map in situ, but Santa Ragione emphasizes the importance of this mechanic. It’s right to; not only does it add a whole new level of intrigue and atmosphere to the game–that Gravoi is alive around you, conspiring against you–but it also acts as the ultimate punishment for failure, whether it’s accidental or self-inflicted. It forces you to never give up hope, even if you’re just down to your final life.

Everything becomes so much more important–your restricted number of matches, a seemingly pointless flyer as a clue, your stamina for running, a nearby hiding spot, or a bonfire to remind you of where you’ve been–and while its combatless system has been done brilliantly in the past by stablemates Amnesia and Outlast , it still feels completely fresh, even if its dodgy camera angles, poor clipping, and unstable frame rate seem like they’re from the PS3 era. Most of what’s “wrong” with Saturnalia only seems to add to its weirdness, quirks, and suffocating ambience. Saturnalia’s system of detective work is initially confusing, but soon proves to be very cleverly .

. . [+] implemented.

Santa Ragione Still, Saturnalia is hamstrung by a couple of problems, specifically its controls–which bind the action button and sprinting to the right shoulder buttons, and detective-like thoughts and exposition to B/Circle. There’s no intuition to it. Admittedly, there’s very little intuition to the experience as a whole.

Maybe that’s the point. Similarly, the nodes you use to explore and uncover your ever-changing surroundings are lost in translation; even the early tutorial asks you to, say, select the “player node”, without even adding a helpful glow to what you’re looking for. Again, the game doesn’t hold your hand, but its UX could certainly use a bit of fine-tuning, even if it’s just for the earliest stages.

Saturnalia will live rent-free in your head for days and weeks after you’ve cleared its confounding story. Nearly every perceivable fault somehow combines into a near-perfect whole–one that will make sure you’ll never quite trust your surroundings ever again. It may have dropped just in time for people to find a scary game for Halloween, but Saturnalia is much more than a seasonal frightfest–it may prove to be the most unique horror game of 2022, if not the best.

It’s also free on the Epic Games Store until November 3; get it while you can . Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

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