Three people come to inside a maze they had no part in making, somewhere amid the wreckage of Europe after World War I. The keys are hidden, supplies are thin and time is running out. One of them is caught in a trap and must decide if an arm is worth more than escaping.
This time you aren’t just watching it happen on a screen. The decision is yours.
That’s the idea behind SAW: Genesis, the most unusual step the franchise has taken in over two decades. This Saw prequel isn’t a film. It’s an asymmetrical multiplayer game built around 3v1 matches: three players take the role of the Accused, and one plays the Judge.
Jigsaw’s philosophy has an older owner
The setting caught me most off guard. Genesis is set about a hundred years before John Kramer begins putting his own victims through Jigsaw’s notorious tests. That places it earlier in the timeline than any Saw story so far.
There’s no pig mask this time. Instead, the story centers on the Judge, a figure shaped by the Great War who comes to believe humanity can be “rehabilitated” through pain and sacrifice. The Judge designs lethal trials for the Accused, packed with traps and hard moral choices, where surviving can carry a huge price.
According to Bloober Team, the Judge is an early architect of the philosophy that would later influence Jigsaw. It’s a clever way around the canon problem. The game can widen the mythology while leaving Kramer’s established origin alone, and it finally sheds some light on how the whole thing began.
What happens when you can’t just watch
The films depend on suspense, grisly practical effects and carefully staged reveals. Genesis turns those horror tropes into systems, so every match plays out differently.
Maps are procedurally generated. Working together, the Accused must solve challenges, scavenge for supplies and track down keys before the clock hits zero. Meanwhile, the Judge operates from the shadows, using hidden passages, toxins, traps and even an Accomplice to manipulate the other players. (Few things are more Saw than an Accomplice, considering how many secret helpers of Kramer’s the films have uncovered.)
Then comes the most Saw mechanic imaginable: a permanent sacrifice. Anyone caught in a Rehabilitation Trap may need to give up a body part to break free. Losing an arm or a leg then changes how well you can move, fight or solve puzzles.
The Judge isn’t spared either. In most asymmetrical horror games the villain is nearly untouchable, but here the Judge is physically vulnerable and can be injured.
Ten movies of Jigsaw lead here
It helps to remember how far the series has already wandered. James Wan’s original 2004 film was a fairly straightforward grim mystery about two men trapped in a bathroom with a gruesome choice to make. Nine more films followed, each one building out a mythology of apprentices, secret accomplices, overlapping timelines and ever more elaborate “games.”
Even after Kramer’s death, the franchise kept circling back to him through flashbacks, victims we’d never seen before and new characters who copied his methods. A prequel, then, isn’t a surprise. A prequel you play alongside two friends and a stranger who wants you dead is something new.
It’s an intriguing new idea of what Saw can be. Whether it wins over longtime fans, newcomers or both remains to be seen.
When you can play it
SAW: Genesis is being co-developed by Bloober Team’s Broken Mirror Games and Anshar Studios, with Bloober Team handling publishing. Following a recent delay, the game is now scheduled to launch in Early Access in Q1 2027. So far, PC is the only confirmed platform.
The game opens in a trench-scarred world a century before Kramer, where the first rule of Jigsaw’s philosophy already applied: escaping might cost you a limb.