Tenebris Somnia launched on October 16 for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC. The 2D survival horror game supports Xbox Play Anywhere, letting buyers play on console and PC without an additional purchase.
Players control Julia, who visits her ex-boyfriend’s apartment after nightmares of monsters tearing him apart. What she finds turns the pixel-art adventure into a fight for survival, with puzzles, limited resources, brutal bosses, and a frightening story to uncover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dskETHTRVTU
The live-action scenes are part of the tension, not a break from it. They can begin or end without warning, and may drop players directly into an enemy encounter. That abrupt handoff puts filmed horror and pixel-art gameplay in the same rhythm.
Filmmaker and game developer Andrés Borghi made Tenebris Somnia with Saibot Studios, led by Tobías Rusjan, and publisher New Blood Interactive. In an Xbox Wire feature about the game’s production, New Blood describes filming with real actors and locations, using practical monster effects and limited CGI. The effects included silicon masks and prosthetics molded from performers’ faces, with Marcos Berta (When Evil Lurks) supervising the monster work.
New Blood also says the team used no generative AI in production. The studio describes the game’s pixel art as hand-drawn and its English, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese localization as human-translated. The production took nearly four years, with filming that included a 17th-century Argentine cathedral and late-night subway shots.
Would live-action scenes that can lead straight into combat work for you in a horror game? For more game-making details like Tenebris Somnia‘s practical creature effects, stay connected on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
