Saw: Genesis
About this game
The moment Billy the puppet appeared on stage at Summer Game Fest 2026 to inform Geoff Keighley he wanted to play a game, the audience reaction was immediate and completely understandable. A new SAW game - announced in the most Saw way possible, with the puppet just casually walking out to deliver the news. Genuinely brilliant piece of showmanship. And what followed surprised me more than I expected, because what Bloober Team, Broken Mirror Games, and Anshar Studios have built here isn't the kind of horror game I would have predicted from this franchise. SAW: Genesis is a 3v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game set in the aftermath of World War I - nearly a century before John Kramer ever picked up a rusty blade and started testing people. The central antagonist is the Judge, a WWI veteran shaped and scarred by his experiences in The Great War who has developed a brutal philosophy of rehabilitation through pain and sacrifice. Sound familiar? The game's premise is essentially an origin-of-philosophy story - this is what inspired Jigsaw, filtered through post-war England in the 1920s, with retro-inspired traps and puzzle design that fit the period. It's a genuinely clever way to expand the franchise without treading on established territory. Mechanically, one player takes on the role of the Judge while three others play as the Accused - players pulled into one of the Judge's elaborate trials. The Accused must work together to complete challenges, scavenge items, collect keys, and find their way through the maze before time runs out. Each match plays out on procedurally generated maps, which means routes shift, plans collapse, and no two trials unfold identically. The Judge's role is equally interesting in how it departs from the standard asymmetrical horror template. Rather than physically chasing or overpowering the survivors, the Judge is physically vulnerable - they can't brute-force a win. Instead, they operate from the shadows: deploying traps, using secret passages, flooding areas with hallucinogenic gas or paralytic toxins, and coordinating with an accomplice to manipulate the trial from behind the scenes. The power dynamic is psychological rather than physical, which feels deeply faithful to the SAW ethos. What makes the Accused side genuinely tense is the injury system. Players can suffer permanent injuries during a match that affect their abilities and survival chances. And if a player's will deteriorates far enough and they become ensnared in one of the Judge's rehabilitation traps, they face a decision borrowed directly from the films - sacrifice a body part to escape, or rely on teammates to rescue them in time. That kind of choice mechanic, embedded in actual multiplayer stakes rather than cutscenes, is exactly the kind of design that could give this game real legs in the right community. The game is heading to Early Access on PC via Steam first, with a closed alpha sign-up already open and the alpha itself kicking off in early July 2026. A Fall 2026 Early Access release is the current window, with no full release date confirmed yet. Bloober Team has framed this as the same kind of collaborative relationship they built with Lionsgate on the Blair Witch game - people who understand how to handle horror IP without stripping out what makes it work. I don't play a lot of asymmetrical horror games - Dead by Daylight and I had a complicated relationship that ended badly and I've never fully recovered - but something about the Judge being physically vulnerable rather than invincible is the kind of design shift that actually makes me want to try this. The 1920s setting, the pre-Jigsaw lore, the philosophical framing around rehabilitation and sacrifice - it all hangs together in a way that feels considered rather than purely franchise-driven.