You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione, but the independent Italian studio has been creating boundary pushing, award-winning games for over a decade and a half now. It launched into space for 2013’s mesmerising ambient puzzler Mirror Moon EP, it took to the Italian countryside for 2016’s politically minded Wheels of Aurelia, it fled all manner of horrors in the ancient Sardinian town of 2022’s Saturnalia, explored post-Covid trauma in the blistering Italian sun in 2023’s Mediterranea Inferno, and it’s about to venture into even stranger, darker territory with Horses, an unsettling first-person narrative horror adventure set on a farm whose livestock consists of naked masked humans. But the excitement of Horses’ long-awaited arrival on 2nd December has been tempered by more sobering news. After a series of confounding decisions by Valve, Horses is effectively banned from Steam. And unable to reach a significant portion of the PC market, it’s highly unlikely to recoup its development costs – meaning Horses very well might be the studio’s final game.
