Quick answer: A survival horror game with no combat, set in a Sardinian village that physically rearranges itself every time you lose all four characters. Critics gave it 80 on PC and two IGF honourable mentions. Steam players rate it 90% positive. The deliberately juddering animation that put people off at launch can now be switched off, along with a first-person mode and a black-and-white filter added in November 2023. List price is $29.99 and it falls under $5.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Four people are in a Sardinian mining village called Gravoi on the night of the winter solstice in 1989. Something is hunting them. None of them can fight it. All they can do is run until their stamina gives out, hide, and strike matches to see where they are going.
Then comes the part that makes Saturnalia worth talking about. When all four characters are gone, the village rebuilds itself into a different shape, and you start again in a town you half recognise.
The four characters, properly
You begin with Anita and unlock the others as you go. Each has one ability and one private reason for being there, and the reasons matter as much as the abilities.
| Character | Ability | Why they are in Gravoi |
|---|---|---|
| Anita | Carries a map and can memorise routes to places you have found | A geologist surveying the mines, pregnant after an affair with a local man |
| Paul | A flash camera that briefly stuns the creature and records clues | A photojournalist and orphan, back to find out who his birth parents were |
| Sergio | A satellite phone that works almost anywhere, a real advantage in 1989 | Driven out of the village years ago for being gay. He has come back to care for his dying father |
| Claudia | Small enough to squeeze through gaps the others cannot | Daughter of the local bar owner, finally asking what really happened to her aunt |
Worth pausing on Sergio, because his story gets mangled in a lot of write-ups. He is not a man trying to leave a partner. He was exiled by his own village for who he is, and has come home anyway because his father is dying. That is a considerably harder story, and it is the one the game actually tells.
What the scores say
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
| Measure | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Metacritic, PC | 80 | The best-reviewed version |
| Metacritic, Xbox | 78 | Only 4 reviews |
| Metacritic, PS5 | 72 | The weakest, with most reviews landing as mixed |
| OpenCritic | 77, "Strong" | 27 critics, 68% recommend |
| Metacritic users | 6.6 | 33 ratings, from the launch period |
| Steam | 90% positive | Reviewing the 2023 version with the new options |
| PlayStation Store | 4.42 / 5 | 96 ratings |
That Steam number is doing something specific. Steam buyers came a year late, to a version with the first-person camera, the film noir filter and the animation toggle already in. They are not rating the same product the early Metacritic users were, which is worth holding in mind before treating 6.6 and 90% as a contradiction.
It also collected serious recognition: two IGF 2022 honourable mentions, for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Visual Art, plus finalist placings at A MAZE and IndieCade. Rock Paper Shotgun gave it a Bestest Best and put it among their games of the year.
The thing that put people off is now optional
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
At launch, every character animated in a deliberate stop-motion judder, running at a far lower frame rate than the world around them while the game itself held 60fps. It is a striking effect, it makes the whole thing feel like a half-remembered dream, and a meaningful number of players found it physically unpleasant to look at for an hour.
On 8 November 2023, with the Steam release, Santa Ragione shipped a settings update. It included:
- A "smoother animations" option that swaps the stop-motion effect for normal 60fps movement
- An optional first-person camera, plus a hybrid mode that switches to first person only indoors
- A film noir filter that strips out the saturated giallo colour entirely
- Camera responsiveness sliders and other accessibility settings aimed at motion sickness
- A photo mode, useful precisely because each version of the village is unrepeatable
So if you read a review warning that this game will give you a headache, that review predates the fix. You can now choose between the intended presentation and a comfortable one. That makes almost every pre-November-2023 criticism of the visuals conditional rather than final, in the same way the patches did in our Saints Row review.
How it actually plays
There is no combat at all. Matches are your light source and they run out. Stamina is your escape and it runs out faster than you would like. Paul's flash can stun the creature briefly, but film is scarce. If it reaches you, that character is gone for the rest of the run.
Lose all four and the village reshuffles. Not entirely, which is the clever part: shortcuts you opened stay open, and knowledge you gathered stays useful, so each collapse costs you orientation rather than progress. Edge described it as leaving them as rattled as anything since Immortality, and the reason is that the map stops being something you learn and becomes something you keep re-learning.
Clues go into a mind-map style chart, and switching characters means physically finding another one and talking to them. Because each person interprets what they find through their own story, two characters can hold halves of the same answer and never put them together. That is deliberate, and it is where most of the game's atmosphere comes from, though it also means you can wander for a long time holding information you do not understand.
The honest problems
The creature is not very bright. For a game whose entire tension rests on being hunted, it is too easily outpaced and outwitted once you know the rhythm, and the fear drains out of the later hours as a result.
The narrative is deliberately unguided, and "deliberately" does not always mean "successfully". With four parallel stories, a shifting map and no quest markers, it is genuinely easy to lose the thread of what you were trying to do and why.
And the PS5 version scored lowest for a reason. If you have the choice, the PC build is the one carrying the 2023 feature set and the best reviews.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Looking for horror unlike anything else | Buy | Sardinian folklore, giallo colour and a village that rebuilds itself. There is no close comparison |
| Put off by the juddery animation | Reconsider | You can turn it off, and switch to first person or black and white too |
| On PC | Buy here | 80 on Metacritic, all the 2023 features, and a free 40-minute demo on Steam |
| You need direction and objectives | Skip | Unguided by design. Being lost is the experience, not a failure state |
| Here for scares that keep working | Manage expectations | The creature becomes manageable once you learn it, and the dread fades with it |
| Browsing at full price | Wait a week | It has fallen below $5 repeatedly. There is no reason to pay $29.99 |
Where to get it
It is on PC via Steam, Epic and GOG, plus PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and macOS. It launched on 27 October 2022 at $19.99, exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC for a year, and was free there for its first week, so a surprising number of people already own it without realising.
List price is now $29.99, but it discounts aggressively, with tracked lows around $3.59 and current sale prices commonly under $6. Limited Run Games produced physical editions for PS4, PS5 and Switch. There is also a free 40-minute demo on Steam, which given how divisive the presentation is remains the sensible first step.
Verdict
One of the few genuinely original horror games of its generation, and far more approachable now than at launch. The shifting village, the four interlocking stories and the Sardinian folk setting produce something no other game is doing, and the 2023 update removed the one barrier that was keeping people out. The creature is too easy to escape and the lack of direction will lose some players entirely. At under five dollars with a free demo, finding out costs you almost nothing. Assessed against the current build including the November 2023 feature update.
Frequently asked questions
Can I turn off the jerky animation?
Yes. A "smoother animations" setting added in November 2023 replaces the stop-motion effect with standard 60fps movement. The same update added camera responsiveness sliders and other accessibility options.
Is there a first-person mode?
Yes, added with the Steam release. There is also a hybrid option that switches to first person only when you are indoors, and a black-and-white film noir filter if the saturated colour is too much.
What happens when you die?
That character is lost for the run. When all four are gone, the village physically reconfigures into a new layout. Shortcuts you opened and knowledge you gathered carry over, so you lose your bearings rather than your progress.
Is there any combat?
None. You run, hide and manage matches and stamina. Paul's camera flash stuns the creature briefly but film is scarce. Getting caught is fatal.
Which version should I buy?
PC if you can. It scored 80 on Metacritic against 72 on PS5, and it has the full 2023 feature set. A free 40-minute demo is on Steam.
Did it win anything?
Two honourable mentions at IGF 2022, for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Visual Art, plus finalist placings at A MAZE 2021 and IndieCade 2021. It is also the first Italian game made with support from the Sardegna Film Commission.
Do I already own it?
Possibly. It was given away free on the Epic Games Store during its first week in late October 2022. Check your Epic library before buying.
Where to go next
- Trek to Yomi, another game that leads entirely with its art direction
- Chernobylite, another small European studio that kept improving its game for years
- Axiom Verge, a tiny team with one genuinely original mechanic
- Hotline Miami Collection, the benchmark for style driving a whole game
- Saints Row, and why reviews written at launch stop being true
- Why the strangest games are the ones you remember
- Browse more Adventure and Action guides
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