Tenebris Somnia splices live-action horror into an 8-bit adventure
The FMV scenes come from Andrés Borghi, who worked on When Evil Lurks, and Faith developer Airdorf Games is executive producer on New Blood's release.
Tenebris Somnia, a retro 2D survival horror adventure that cuts to filmed live-action scenes, is out now on PC, PS5, Switch and Xbox Series X|S, and Eurogamer's October 30, 2026 hands-on calls the combination both impressive and unsettling. The game launched on Steam on October 16 through publisher New Blood Interactive.
Pixels and film
On the surface it plays like an old point-and-click. You control a young woman searching her ex-boyfriend's apartment after something terrible has happened there, walking screen to screen, picking up items and combining them to open locked doors. The pace is deliberately old-school.
The hook is what happens when you solve something. Progress is often rewarded with a polished live-action sequence featuring real actors in heavy make-up and prosthetics, staging the creatures and characters you have only seen as pixels. Eurogamer describes figures such as a person with a second, inverted face and a towering woman with a hole in her face, and says the footage makes the low-res world feel more solid and more threatening afterwards.
Who made it
The film work comes from Argentinian director Andrés Borghi, who worked on acclaimed horror film When Evil Lurks and has made games before. He co-developed Tenebris Somnia with Saibot Studios. Airdorf Games, the developer of Faith: The Unholy Trinity, is executive producer, and the debt to Faith's rule-bending 8-bit horror is clear.
The catch
Eurogamer is not fully sold. Early on, the stop-start rhythm of backtracking and trial-and-error item use drains tension, and the writing in the adventure sections feels functional rather than gripping. The reviewer is more hopeful about the bigger story, which centres on a horror short your ex was making and seems to loop back on itself.
Price and languages
On Steam it costs $24.99 with a free demo available. Text and menus support English, two Spanish variants, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, with no SEA languages. It is also sold on GOG.
Source: Eurogamer; Steam.
