I'm a big fan of your previous work - especially Saturnalia. When you teased this project two years ago, I was really excited for it, it seemed like it was a pretty fresh, transgressive idea. When the steam ban news broke out, I was just as excited to try it. Having played through the game now, it's even more baffling why they wouldn't let this game on when there are actually horrible sex games on the platform that encourage things like rape. There isn't much here that's all that offensive.

But... the game itself? It wasn't that great, in all honesty. It feels as undercooked as the many, many "horror" games that litter Itch where the game basically says "Do X tasks and experience some linear horror", but replace the typical American "spooky ghost pops out" with some giallo-esque stuff. It feels amateurish, and the undercooked gameplay ends up taking away from the horror on display.

I think part of the disappointment is on me. Coming from Saturnalia - this big, sprawling nonlinear experience with a lot of interesting design choices that meshed together really well - I expected something similar in ambition, if not in scope. I knew from the trailers that this was going to be janky, and I don't mind that necessarily - Saturnalia had jank in it too but it was punching so high up it didn't matter to me. So maybe I'm being unfair here, but it doesn't feel like there's much to the game.

The horror is immediate, "the horses are people". It's shocking, but that shock wears off pretty quickly. In a movie with live actors, the horror might have stuck - real live bodies would be much more visceral. Here, the clunky animations don't have any of that viscerality. The characters look too dopey and the live footage segments are a bit too tame. Not that I think they needed to be more violent or explicit, but more that it feels like the whole concept starts and ends with "the horses are people" and so there isn't anything there past that initial shock.

The linearity itself also kills off the one other thing this could have gone for, which is how the player is complicit in being largely passive. I don't have much of a choice for most of the game, and going along with what the game tells me to do doesn't have that same impact. Maybe if the game was more of a fully realized "farming sim" where the player was free to choose what to focus on and was rewarded for "taking care" of the farm, lulling them into forgetting about the horror they're seeing, before unleashing it on them? I don't know if that would've been a game many would have been able to stomach, but it does feel like parts of the game wanted to be more ambitious than they ended up. But the story making the player out to be a savior of the "horses" (at least with the choices I made) felt a little... icky? Given how passive Anselmo is for most of the game, and how vulnerable these people are.

I'm sorry for the long, negative review. I'm disappointed, but mostly because - if the game doesn't do well and Santa Ragione shuts down, it will be going out with a whimper, in my eyes. It's a horrible industry that would allow such a talented team to implode after one miss. I really do hope the game sells well and you get to keep making games because you lot have such diverse ideas and I'd love to see more from you. Wishing you all the best, no matter what happens next.