Tenebris Somnia is out now: retro survival horror with live-action cutscenes

Platforms, price and languages

The game’s official site lists PS5, Switch 2 and Xbox Series, plus Steam and GOG on PC. On Xbox Wire, New Blood confirms it is out now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC with Xbox Play Anywhere, so one purchase covers console and PC. The US PlayStation Store listing shows the PS5 release on October 16 at 17:00 UTC. The date announcement Gematsu reported in June also included the original Nintendo Switch, but the official site no longer lists it and we could not confirm that version today.

On the Spanish Steam store it costs €19.99, with a 20% launch discount bringing it to €15.99 at the time of writing. Steam lists Spanish (Spain) among its languages, alongside English, Latin American Spanish, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese. Physical editions are available to pre-order through Lost in Cult, according to the official site.

A nightmare in pixels

The lead is Julia, a young woman who dreams every night that monsters tear her ex-boyfriend apart. Hoping for some peace of mind, she goes to his apartment to check on him, and what she finds drags her into a horror beyond her worst nightmares.

New Blood describes it as survival horror in the vein of classics like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, adapted to a 2D look closer to the NES or Famicom: you survive on limited resources, solve puzzles and fight creatures and bosses. The in-game art and animation are hand-drawn, pixel by pixel.

Live-action scenes shot in Buenos Aires

The standout feature is the cinematics, shot with real actors in real locations. According to Airdorf, the game’s executive producer and creator of FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, writing on Xbox Wire, the idea came while Borghi was streaming FAITH. Borghi and Tobías Rusjan, who leads Saibot Studios, built a demo and pitched it to New Blood.

Filming took place in Buenos Aires with a professional crew. Practical creature effects were supervised by Marcos Berta, who worked on When Evil Lurks, and Argentine actress Clara Kovacic plays the lead. Silicone masks and prosthetics were moulded from the performers’ faces, and some shots were filmed in the subway in the middle of the night.

The scenes are not just a reward for progress: they are woven into play and you never know when they will start or end, so one can drop you straight into a fight. After nearly four years of production, New Blood says no generative AI was used at any stage, and it hopes to release a making-of documentary after launch.