The pitch sounds like a bar bet: a retro 2D survival horror, all pixels and locked doors and dwindling batteries, that periodically cuts, without warning, to live-action video. Real actors. Practical effects. Creatures built out of latex and bad intentions rather than shaders. That is Tenebris Somnia, directed by Argentine filmmaker Andres Borghi with Saibot Studios, and published by New Blood Interactive, the label that already gave the genre DUSK and FAITH and has yet to miss the vein.
The logic of the device is older than it looks. Found footage taught film audiences that grain is a threat display: the worse the image, the closer the thing. Games have borrowed that grammar for years, VHS filters and camcorder overlays, but almost always as a skin over polygons. Tenebris Somnia runs it in the other direction. The pixel art is the safe register, the abstraction you can hide inside, and when the screen cuts to video the abstraction is revoked. You are no longer reading about the thing. You are looking at it.
The game arrives October 16 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Switch, and the desk's appointment is already in the ledger. A free demo has been circulating since 2023, updated repeatedly, on Steam, GOG and Xbox, which is a long, patient runway for a small team with a camera crew: the sort of production where somebody has to schedule the monster's costume fitting around the level design.
Hands-on verdict when we have hands on it. If the tape starts playing by itself, we will consider that a feature and bill them for the electrician.