Everything and everyone against you

Sanguivore Twenty Below is a cooperative-focused horror game, similar to other games like Dead by Day Light and The Outlast Trials, which have given a lot of prominence to the relatively new genre in the gaming world, resulting in more similar games like this one emerging.

The title is currently available in early access stages, which is why we couldn't experience many of the features that will be unlocked when it is officially released. However, we were able to test the initial mission in both cooperative and single-player modes. 



In this survival horror game, you will find yourself in Alaska, a normally hostile environment due to its harsh temperatures, which becomes the setting where you will be the protagonist in a city haunted by blood-eating beings, in other words, even though it is not explicitly stated, they are vampires.

The city of Alaska, however, will not just be a mere setting, but will become a real problem for the player. In addition to the vampires, the city is also facing a winter storm that makes the success of your mission even more difficult, which is to escape from that place and join the other survivors. 



The city is completely uninhabited, with people killed by vampires and others who fled to the coast, and the four people left behind will be the ones we have to use to escape by facing the various obstacles we encounter throughout the gameplay.

Without my friends, I am nothing... or almost nothing

In Sanguivore Twenty Below, collaborating with other players becomes essential. Whether through local play, where you can enter a code to join your friends, or through online play, with random players, communication and cooperation are the roots from which all the rest of the gameplay branches out, as we already know from other similar cooperative games.

You can play with up to four people and, if you have been completely randomly matched through online matchmaking, the game itself offers the possibility to communicate seamlessly, thanks to the use of walkie-talkies that you will find as soon as you start playing the first mission, something that greatly facilitates completing the objective, as communication is crucial in gameplay.



And cooperation is essential because if you are attacked by a vampire, your friends will have medical kits available that can revive you. But if you prefer a more hardcore gameplay and prefer to play alone, if you are attacked, you can only save yourself if you have a medical kit available among the items in your inventory.

Something a little different from the usual in this type of game are the escape plans that provide suggestions, and that the player can face as mini-objectives, which serve to find one of the four available escape routes, a very positive point because normally, in horror escape room games, we only have 1 method of escape, but here we have 4 different types, depending only on the circumstances and what the player managed to do in their run.

In addition, in the inventory, there will also be a kind of diary where all the information you collect will be stored, including various access keys and some notes from your character.

The dangers of Alaska

The game is in early access, so it was not possible to test some of the mechanics that will be present in the final version, such as the character progression system, which although at the end of the mission you see a screen with your statistics and the total experience points earned, you still cannot distribute them.

And Sanguivore still has some issues beyond the technical ones that we expect to be fixed, although it manages to create good tension in the chases and the map environment is truly scary and immersive, it falls short in the aesthetics of the vampires.

Don't get me wrong, the game is not bad, but it is something that cuts a good part of the immersion when you are tense fleeing from a chase, and at the moment you fail and get caught, the monster is not as scary, which ends up breaking a good part of the impact and fear that the game generates in the player.



But overall, the game is very good, the atmosphere is excellent, the soundtrack and sound effects are very good and contribute strongly to create tension in the player and that feeling that you can be caught at any moment, in addition to the mechanics and items being very well thought out and functional, something crucial for this type of game. 

Despite some early access problems, it is evident that Blood Eater is committed to improving the aspects of the game that are still missing for the final version, both through the various in-game notices that various aspects will still be added or improved, as well as through the care and dedication in the details that the game shows us, and the quality of the gameplay.

Although we still don't have the final release date, with the early access version we can already conclude that Sanguivore: Twenty Below is an excellent and highly recommended game, because even with many limitations, the game is very fun and visibly well-crafted, and will certainly please horror genre lovers.

Sanguivore: Twenty Below was played on PC via Steam.

We sincerely thank Blood Eater Games for providing us with the access key to the game and allowing this review to be possible.