Saturnalia is a deeply scary game you should give a try for Halloween

The light crackling of a fire, far off chimes which shift closer and further, slightly left and then right channel in your headphones, and the quiet whispering in Italian that feels like it’s murmuring between your shoulderblades — you know a horror game has the juice when you get full body frisson chills just from the sound design in the main menu. Saturnalia‘s haunting, creeping dread starts there, and only gets better.

Despite its accolades from press, I’ve only rarely seen people mention it, but it is one of the most bloodcurdling games I’ve ever played. It deserves so much more attention.

Saturnalia starts off relatively normal, like most folk horror does. You encounter your four main characters in sunny Gravoi, a small Sardinian village, all there for differing reasons. You are introduced to certain mechanics, consumables, and the phones, which you can use to swap characters or locations. You’ll need to, since characters have different gameplay bonuses. And then, night falls. It’s up to these four friends to figure out what the heck is even going on, let alone try to stop it, or even try to escape it. If all four main characters die or are trapped, it isn’t game over. The town rearranges itself before you can start trying to explore again, and you’ll need to re-find some items you’ll need to progress. Luckily, they’re still right where you found them — if you can find that place again. The shifting map is a bit frustrating — it may turn some players off completely, but you can turn it off in the accessibility settings. That shifting also lends to that sense of being confused and wrong and a little unhinged as the game progresses. The old woman’s house was right here, wasn’t it? Or was that last time. I went left like before, where is the school? There are touristy visitor maps to consult around town, if you can find them, and the neon that lights up the darkness in the purple-gray sketched darkness will also give you some hint as to what’s up ahead.

As your objectives dwindle, the number and types of fail states you encounter will increase as well. Everything is less forgiving, and the other characters become harder to save — including some NPCs you may want to discuss things with for the sake of closure for one of your characters. That was where my most frustrated moments were. It’s impossible to tell which things you can leave for later, and which you’ll just have to do another playthrough to understand because you’re already too late. And also, the perpetual plight of horror games with fixed or semi-fixed camera angles leading to your character doing weird jukes and not crouching where you’re sure they should be able to can be an issue. Plus, you can have your friends follow you, which goes about as well as NPC escort pathing usually does.

The best part of this game is the creature itself, which is truly saying something. It is simultaneously hulking and lithe, familiar and foreign, and it jitters as it slowly lumbers toward you. But it doesn’t jump scare — it slowly encroaches on you with a skittering sound that becomes grating like a cabasa, which gets more intense and louder and adds chimes as it goes closer. And closer. And closer. And if you hear it scream, a sound like a screeching falcon but with a deeper, guttural tone to it, find a place to hide because it is close and it knows where you are. But, do you trust yourself to know the path anymore? And if you find a place to hide, you can hear your own labored breathing, and the sound of the creature as you hope it goes by and leaves you unscathed.

I will admit I was jumpscared by this game, not because there are jumpscares in this game, but because I was so focused and tense I jumped and screamed out loud like I was about to get murdered when my husband came in my office and was like, “hey do you mind if we get Chipotle for dinner tonight.” There are a few points like that, where a character will flat out tell you, “when you get to this point of interest I will call you on a landline phone,” because you have to establish a connection to each location through the phones before you can use them to swap characters. Though you’re expecting that call, you spent all this time carefully creeping your way toward that objective that, when the jangling chime explodes into the space, you might be taken off guard.

And when that happens, you might lose out on Chipotle for dinner. Truly the scariest outcome of all.

Saturnalia is available on Steam, GoG, and Epic for PC and MacOS, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.