For all their faults in making horror games in the past, Bloober Team have done a lot of good as of late. Case in point: the Silent Hill 2 Remake (divisive, but still a quality game) and Cronos: The New Dawn (a unique sci-fi one that’s wholly underrated). So what’s next for the team apart from the upcoming Silent Hill 1 remake?

How about an asymmetrical 3-versus-1 survival horror multiplayer title based on Lionsgate’s most successful horror series ever, and set after the 1920s? We’re talking about Saw, the horror film where the perpetrator Jigsaw lets his victims choose whether to live or die through a series of bloodletting traps that require sacrifice from participants. And at times, you wonder if Jigsaw or his victims are truly what they are from start to finish.

Saw: Genesis, Bloober Team’s latest that was recently revealed at Summer Game Fest 2026, is quite a leap given that the developers do not handle movie-based games, but it’s a first time for everything, right?

Live or Die, Make Your Choice

Saw: Genesis has you picking between two teams for competitive play: the Accused and The Judge. The Accused comes in three per team, and have to work together under pressure to find and kill The Judge. Meanwhile, the Judge has all the tools at their disposal to incapacitate and trap their victims to killing themselves. The Accused can get separated and caught, and subsequently get put into a Saw-style puzzle room dilemma where they have to sacrifice their bodies and parts to get out of them. This being a game, The Accused can’t actually have all their limbs cut off early in the title (those confirmed death sequences will be part of the losing cutscene bits of course) for balance reasons, but they will be severely hampered movement and health wise the longer they stay in the maze. Speaking of which, there’s a timer counting down and if it reaches zero, the Accused’s head traps will activate and play their deaths in disgusting glory.

The Judge is no Mr X; he cannot tank through the game with brute force. Rather like the main man John Kramer, he is best at anticipating, planning, and piling on a ton of special abilities and debuffs when he manages to get all three Accused in a trap room. Case in point: one of the game’s playthroughs has The Judge (specifically The Doctor, one of the many playable Judges) luring the Accused to a dingy mortuary-vibe room with a bunch of dentist chairs as obstacles. They all breathe in hallucination gas laid out by The Doctor, and within seconds they’re all attacking each other. The Judge then hangs around the top of the room, summoning an accomplice (big body, can kidnap one Accused), and then lay out a bear trap when the chaos subsides. He can also cut off escape routes, take his own secret elevators and corridors for shortcuts, and use all sorts of medicine to debuff the party and eventually separate them.

Saw: Genesis is meant to be intense and short, so a typical Judge VS Accused match will go on about 15 minutes or shorter, depending on each player’s skill level. I personally was hoping for a single-player narrative-driven horror game, but this multiplayer title will clearly find its audience and will bring more limelight to the long-standing horror series. I’m still hoping for single-player content being put in somehow as a bonus later past its eventual 1.0 release, but for now, Bloober Team has their priorities straight and are trying out new thing, aware of the risks with bringing in a new asymmetrical survival horror multiplayer title.

Besides, I do feel a series like Saw is in tune with Bloober Team: they have a balanced mix of hits and misses. But when the medium they create hits, they truly hit it out of the ballpark, much like how Saw II and Saw X. With any luck, Bloober’s new Saw venture might be that title to scratch the proverbial survival horror multiplayer itch.

Saw: Genesis will be out in Fall 2026 for PC in early access form. More content will be planned for Saw: Genesis during its early access period. In the meantime, you can sign up for the Closed Alpha.