Saturnalia

Get this game Then get HORSES on a different platform than Steam or Epic because Gabe and Tim eat corn the long way.

Saturnalia is a survival horror mystery set in a small Sardinian town where a strange ritual is unfolding. You control four outsiders who are visiting Gravoi, each for their own reasons. However, they are forced to work together as a monster begins stalking the streets during the night that the game takes place. Your goal is to explore the empty town, investigate public buildings and underground tunnels, gather clues, interact with the few people still outside, and try to find a way out of this. Each character has unique skills, so you have to strategically move the characters through town to have them perform certain actions, to uncover all of the mystery. As you explore, you slowly learn the layout of the town, unlock hidden paths, and piece together the mystery at your own pace - especially if you play in “Detective Mode,” which removes objective markers and lets you truly investigate instead of following your quest log. That mode made the experience far more immersive and satisfying for me. The game is generally full of clever ideas. The town itself is procedurally rearranged after a full party wipe, which is a fantastic concept. The interactions can also be surprisingly reactive and darkly satisfying (without spoiling specifics). On top of that, the art style is striking, the music is memorable, and the sound design will make you paranoid about even the slightest unfamiliar noise. The developers clearly poured their Sardinian heritage into the setting, drawing from local traditions and cultural artifacts like the nuraghi, which gives the whole experience a very unique atmosphere. That said, the difficulty can be brutal. We played on the second hardest mode (everything except permadeath), and once you lose one character, things tend to spiral. Losing skills limits your options, and in the late game the difficulty ramps up so aggressively that it can feel unfair rather than tense. At one point we weren’t sure if the game wasn't maybe just bugged - the difficulty ramped up so much, that losing our characters through that made us rage quit instead of rerolling again. Overall, I’d recommend Saturnalia if you’re into very challenging horror games with detective elements and unique systems. If you’re sensitive to horror or prefer a more forgiving experience, you might want to lower the difficulty - or skip this one entirely.

Saturnalia deserves far more recognition. It's a survival horror drenched in giallo aesthetics, and it absolutely nails its sinister presentation. It's not for everyone. The world is deliberately disorienting (it is a nightmare to navigate if you have no sense of direction), and there is no hand-holding (though you can temper the difficulty by tweaking some gameplay settings before you start). The map gets reshuffled and your consumables are gone each time you lose all your characters (but you keep all your clues and some key items). It also comes with its own share of jank/bugs (some common ones I encountered were characters refusing to move, and sometimes getting stuck after bumping into an edge while moving), but despite that, it's such a unique and interesting experience that I urge you to give it a shot if you're a fan of slow-burning tension and folk storytelling.

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.

An excellent horror game. Great aesthetic and sound design. I play a lot of horror games and most of them don't give me that feel of terror anymore. Saturnalia definitely gave me that feeling again. It manages to terrify you be using great audio queues. letting you know something is nearby. so try to run or hide. The story and characters were interesting too. You don't really see video games protagonists like these a lot. While playing I encountered some small issues. 1. A little buggy in general. 2. The map is hard to use and its hard to navigate in general so I was stuck wandering around for the bakery for awhile 3. Prompts didnt show up for some items/tool/dialogue If you like horror and you're reading reviews I say give it a shot.

Saturnalia is a slow-burn folk horror with plenty of style. Find clues among the ever shifting roads and buildings of Gravoi. Fill your mind map and solve the mysteries of the past. Switch between four characters with different abilities. Don't get caught! Criminally underrated! Had a lot of fun playing this.

I got this for 90% off and I love it. This game is a horror game, but its much more than that. Its an exploration game. There are secrets and mysteries around every corner, in every room. There are some puzzles as well which make you think a little outside the box as well, though so far its not very difficult. Thats another thing I like about the game. It doesnt feel too punishing, even when you do die.

The FOV change when entering buildings made me nauseous and motion sick, and there aren't options to change it :(

enjoyed it a lot until i got forcibly glitched into a wall 45 minutes into the game and couldn't load an older save to get out :/

A greate horror game. The sound of the creature makes me shiver Has a lot of a cool investigation, and when you hear the creature near, you just think "oh ♥♥♥♥, he is coming" haha