When Bloober Team first pulled back the curtain on SAW: Genesis, I can’t say I was particularly excited. That isn’t because I don’t like Saw. Quite the opposite, actually. I’ve been a fan of the franchise for years, through its highs, its lows, and the occasional entry that probably should have stayed in the dark.
The problem is that I’ve also spent the last several years watching multiplayer horror games announce themselves with big promises only to struggle once players actually get their hands on them. Every publisher wants the next Dead by Daylight, but very few manage to build something with enough staying power to survive beyond the initial novelty of seeing a recognizable horror license attached to it.
That skepticism followed me into Bloober Team’s presentation. On paper, a multiplayer-focused Saw game sounds like a cool one. In fact, when the original Saw game was announced, on the Saw forums, there were talks of the perfect Saw game being one where the player is Jigsaw, almost like the Deception series. But instead, what we got was an interesting idea centred around Tapp, but it was not a great game.
Saw has always been a franchise built around tension, morally grey decisions, and watching characters work through these impossible situations where every choice feels terrible, while attempting to grow as people. While the traps and gore are what the more casual audiences often associate with the series, hardcore fans know that’s only part of the Saw series. The reason the original movie became such a phenomenon wasn’t that people wanted to watch elaborate torture devices. It was because the entire premise revolved around people being pushed into impossible situations and being forced to reveal who they really were when survival came at a cost.
That distinction is important because translating it into a multiplayer game isn’t nearly as straightforward as turning Jason Voorhees or Leatherface into a playable killer. The easy route would have been creating another asymmetrical horror game where players run around a map completing objectives while avoiding a threat. After speaking with the team, though, I came away feeling like they understand that simply slapping a Saw logo onto an asymmetrical multiplayer game formula wouldn’t work.
The lead developer spoke about the franchise less like a license and more like a fan, which immediately helped ease some of the concerns I had going into the presentation. “We knew that the first contact would probably be challenging, but I also think that we have something unique, and we’re, as I said, we try to make something that kind of gives you the fantasy, and that’s the original idea. Hey, because, you know, we all love the movies, but the movies don’t allow you to actually be in the trap yourself, and try to get out, for example,” said the creative director from Ashar Studios, Damian Kocurek.
As someone who cares a lot about Saw, there was something reassuring about hearing somebody talk about the series in a way that suggested they actually understood why people love it in the first place.
What they showed off in the behind-closed-doors presentation were the core pillars and ideas that will take players through a match, but sped up so we could see the nitty-gritty stuff.
We got to see survivors sneaking around what is, for now, being called “The Maze,” a giant factory-like building with multiple floors and areas. I’m not sure if this is going to be something that ends up procedurally generated or having multiple set layouts, but either way it looks giant and full of boilers and barbed wire.
Accused can find tools and weapons to help fight back against the match’s proto-Jigsaw called The Doctor, being the person in the trailer with the torn-open jaw. As they go through The Maze, they can permanently give up health for easier access to puzzle tools like a boiler handle being right around a barbed wire corner or across the map.
All this while The Doctor stalks around the map, attacking the players and setting traps. They are more about disabling players with traps before being able to attack them. But the big draw, like in a lot of Saw, is the traps. The Doctor can kidnap players and set them on these, assuming more cinematic traps that require the player trapped to make a choice or be saved by other players. If they fail, it means a gruesome, gory death.
This all sounds interesting if they can pull it off, but these set-piece traps also point at my biggest issue. We’ve seen Saw games before, and while they weren’t good, now the franchise is in the right hands. However, it would work better, tension-wise, as a single-player game. Imagine the terror and tension of trying to escape these traps all by yourself! If you have multiple players, I feel like you should focus more on the duality traps seen in the unfortunate Saw 6 or even Saw 5. The shotgun carousel, the oxygen crusher or even the bucket room and force players to work against each other to get out, only to have to work together again after betrayal to survive.
So all of my concerns have not disappeared. In fact, the biggest concern remains the same question I had before the presentation even started: what exactly is the long-term plan for SAW: Genesis? Modern multiplayer games are expected to become ongoing platforms. Every announcement is followed by discussions about seasonal content, post-launch roadmaps, battle passes, and years of support. That’s become the standard, but it’s also where a lot of these games eventually run into trouble because maintaining player interest for months is difficult. Maintaining it for years is an entirely different challenge.
“I didn’t leave convinced that SAW: Genesis is destined to become the next major multiplayer horror phenomenon, and I don’t think the team would expect anyone to make that determination this early.”
The more I thought about it, the more I really questioned if Saw is the right franchise for this treatment. Unlike something like Dead by Daylight, which can continuously pull from an ever-expanding roster of horror icons, Saw feels like it is incredibly narrow-cast in its characters and character types. There are only so many directions you can take the game before it risks losing the identity that comes with the series, and begins to get silly. That’s not to say Bloober Team doesn’t have ideas; I just find myself questioning whether this is a game designed to live for a long time, or something that might just burn bright before burning off.
With only seeing a presentation and without going hands-on, it does make it a little hard to see how the game actually feels. I didn’t leave convinced that SAW: Genesis is destined to become the next major multiplayer horror phenomenon, and I don’t think the team would expect anyone to make that determination this early. What I did leave with was a greater appreciation for the people making it and a sense that they’re approaching the license from the right angle.
Considering I walked into the showcase with almost no hype whatsoever, that’s a fairly significant accomplishment. I still have questions, and I still have a bunch of concerns. But the only way to really address those is to go hands-on with SAW: Genesis, and with some alpha and beta tests planned for this year, hopefully, we will know sooner rather than later.
