Forget the usual buyer's-guide throat clearing. The first thing reviewers keep circling is the collision itself: a LucasArts-and-Sierra-flavored 2D adventure that suddenly cuts to glossy live-action horror. Eurogamer's Robert Purchese frames Tenebris Somnia as Faith: The Unholy Trinity energy taken further - retro presentation welded to a full live-action film - and notes Airdorf Games' executive-producer link.
Hello, Video Games is less ambivalent. Its November 1 review scores the game 4 out of 5, calling the aesthetic a deliberate return to the constrained "video game coffin" of classic PC dioramas, then praising how that box focuses a linear story without removing the pleasure of figuring inventory puzzles out yourself.
What clicked for Hello, Video Games
HVG leans hard into atmosphere: blood and demonic imagery show up almost immediately in an empty apartment; the interface stays simple (walk, examine, pick up, combine) so the retro-dark plot and FMV can stay center stage. The review singles out the FMV's soft, porcelain-like glow as dreamlike - or nightmare-like - and pairs that with strong voice acting plus a thumping soundtrack over a roughly seven-to-eight-hour runtime that "never let up."
Puzzle examples stay concrete without turning into a walkthrough: translating an occult book's recipes into modern household workarounds; fleeing floating eyeballs through a maze of chairs; putting out candles mid-apparition fight so darkness works for you. HVG also credits developers Andres Borghi and Tobias Rusjan alongside Saibot Studios and publisher New Blood Interactive for choosing limitation over modern scare polish.
Hey, I love this game. Tenebris Somnia beckons me to turn down the lights, put on a couple candles, maybe some incense, and spend a few hours in front of my laptop screen late into the night.
Where Eurogamer hesitates
Purchese's feature is not a scored verdict, and he is upfront about being early in. The admiration for live-action production - actors, makeup, prosthetics, sequences directed by Borghi (also tied to Argentine horror film When Evil Lurks) - sits next to a clear pacing complaint: stop-start adventure busywork can deflate suspense, revisiting rooms can blunt surprises, and functional writing has to carry too much in the pixel segments.
Even so, Eurogamer stays curious about the film-inside-the-story motif (a horror short tied to the missing ex) and how the FMV might be more than literal cutaways. That makes the piece useful as a caution, not a dunk: the weld is impressive; the classic adventure cadence is the risk.
So is Tenebris Somnia worth playing?
If you want Faith-adjacent retro horror and you like being paid for inventory solves with uncanny live-action set pieces, HVG's 4/5 is the clearer buy signal - especially at the Steam list price of $24.99 after the short launch discount window. The game is out now on PC (Steam and GOG), PlayStation 5, Switch, Switch 2, and Xbox Series, per Eurogamer's availability box and New Blood's dated platform push.
If stop-start point-and-click traversal already drains tension for you, take Eurogamer's early pacing notes seriously and watch the trailer / demo before committing a full evening. This roundup does not invent a first-hand playtest; it weighs the published HVG review against Eurogamer's feature so you can decide whether the pixel-and-FMV experiment is your kind of nightmare.
- Best fit: players who like retro 2D horror, inventory puzzles, and weird high-gloss FMV.
- Hesitate if: classic adventure backtracking kills your scare mood.
- Runtime cited by HVG: about 7-8 hours.
- Primary scored take: Hello, Video Games 4/5 (Steam review copy).