Tenebris Somnia Developer Andrés Borghi: The Filmmaker Behind the Nightmare

Who Is the Tenebris Somnia Developer?

The Tenebris Somnia developer credit on Steam reads "Andrés Borghi, Saibot Studios," and that short line is the most accurate one-sentence answer. Borghi is an Argentine filmmaker, VFX artist, and game developer who served as creative director and designed the game's entire structure, while Saibot Studios — the studio associated with co-creator Tobías Rusjan — handled development alongside him. The Tenebris Somnia developer team also includes an executive producer most horror fans already know, plus a publisher that has built a reputation on strange, stylish shooters and retro nightmares.

That matters because the game's biggest talking point — live-action, practical-effects cutscenes stitched into 8- and 16-bit survival horror — only exists because of who was standing behind the camera. This is a breakdown of who did what, how the project survived a four-year shoot, and what the credits actually mean.

The Tenebris Somnia Developer Credits, Explained

Andrés Borghi: A Filmmaker Who Took the Long Road Into Games

Borghi is not a career game developer who dabbed in film. He is a film person who happened to ship one very personal fighting game first. The Black Heart, a 2D fighter he described in the noclip podcast interview as closer to Darkstalkers than Mortal Kombat, started when he was a teenager and took roughly seven years because he insisted on building it alone. It eventually reached Steam in 2021 with help from Rusjan.

In the meantime, Borghi spent about 15 years in post-production and visual effects, directed independent features and a long list of horror short films, and learned exactly how much practical effects cost and who to call. The Tenebris Somnia developer role, in other words, was a collision of two careers rather than a pivot between them.

The concept reportedly arrived close to fully formed while he was streaming FAITH. The gameplay would look like an NES-era adventure, because that is what he grew up playing. The story sequences would be filmed, because that is the world he already knew how to budget, crew, and finish.

Tobías Rusjan and Saibot Studios: The Other Half of the Build

Rusjan is the reason The Black Heart made it to Steam, and he is the co-creator listed alongside Borghi on every store page. New Blood's team has described him as scrappy and relentlessly hardworking, which tracks with the technical reality of shipping a game that carries hours of full-motion video inside a tiny pixel-art shell.

That combination caused genuine headaches. Video codecs and encoders had to be tuned per platform, and patches ballooned because the cutscenes are effectively a feature film smuggled into an indie download. One Xbox build famously played a split second of cutscene audio before the scene itself — an accidental jump scare the team briefly considered keeping.

Rusjan also co-created the concept, which is why the Tenebris Somnia developer credit is a shared one rather than a solo auteur signature.

New Blood, Airdorf, and the Argentine Production Reality

New Blood Interactive picked the project up after Borghi and Rusjan approached the publisher, and the fit was obvious: the game reads as the next step in the mixed-media lineage that FAITH: The Unholy Trinity established. New Blood brought in Airdorf, FAITH's creator, as executive producer — a natural call, given that he had spent two years living in Argentina, speaks Spanish, and drew on local religious imagery for his own horror work.

Borghi has said plainly that without New Blood the game might still be stuck in development hell. The publisher injected funding more than once, and the reason is uncomfortable but simple: Argentina's inflation made multi-year budgeting nearly impossible. Costs quoted one year could double before the next shoot.

What that money bought was visible on set. A crew of roughly 40 people, a rented 17th-century building splattered with fake blood, a grip sliding across the floor to place a light, and at least one 3 a.m. guerrilla shoot on public transportation. Across four years, the live-action material came together over roughly 60 shooting days, with pickups and reshoots layered in as the design evolved.

How the Tenebris Somnia Developer Team Built the Cutscenes

The most distinctive decision is that nobody speaks in the live-action sequences. Borghi framed them as silent film: expression, staging, and sound carry the emotion, while the game itself delivers text. That choice keeps the game feeling native in every language — the Steam page lists English, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese interface and subtitle support, with no full audio track to dub.

Monster design had a harder constraint. Anything appearing in both pixel art and prosthetics had to be legible at low resolution and convincing in close-up, so concept artist El Torres worked in both directions at once. Borghi has joked about rejecting the genre's default "naked bald guy" stalker and dressing his creatures instead, and the two-faced monster was inspired by a sculpture he saw by Mexican artist Emil Melmoth. Marcos Berta then built a hybrid mask-and-puppet prop, and Borghi's post-production work added the digital touches — a tongue, a blink, sweat on Julia's face after a boss fight that the actress had already filmed without exhaustion.

Pacing got the same treatment. Playtesters came out of a boss fight too amped to absorb a quiet scene, so the team lengthened the opening shots of those cutscenes to slow the player down. That kind of invisible editing is why the game's cinematics feel like a reward rather than an interruption.

Release and Reception: A Dated Snapshot

Every number below is a frozen observation, not a live value.

Wikipedia's summary of the game notes that OpenCritic assessed it as "mighty" approval, with 89% of critics recommending it. For context on scale, the campaign is generally described as a roughly seven-to-eight-hour survival horror adventure, complete with multiple endings and deliberately scarce ammo — the classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill discipline applied to a 2D framework.

What the Credits Tell You About the Game

The Tenebris Somnia developer story explains nearly everything unusual about the final product. A VFX veteran directed the film segments. A fighting-game solo dev co-built the engine work. The creator of FAITH produced. A publisher known for Dusk, Ultrakill, and Gloomwood paid for reshoots when a currency crisis ate the budget. Nobody in that chain was optimizing for a safe, familiar survival horror game.

If you want to see the result for yourself, the Tenebris Somnia store page on Steam carries the demo, the current build notes, and the platform list. The full developer conversation is available in the noclip podcast interview with Borghi, Rusjan, and New Blood, which digs into the shooting schedule, the monster pipeline, and the budgeting chaos in far more detail than any store description can.

FAQ

Who is the Tenebris Somnia developer?

The game is credited to Andrés Borghi and Saibot Studios, with Tobías Rusjan as co-creator. Borghi served as creative director and directed the live-action sequences, Airdorf of FAITH: The Unholy Trinity came on as executive producer, and New Blood Interactive published and produced the project.

Is the Tenebris Somnia developer also a filmmaker?

Yes. Andrés Borghi has directed independent features and numerous horror short films and spent around 15 years in post-production and visual effects. That background is why the game uses practical monster effects and silent, dialogue-free cutscenes instead of in-engine cinematics.

How long did Tenebris Somnia take to make?

Steam's release announcement describes "nearly 4 years of game development and filming." The live-action material was captured across roughly 60 shooting days spread over that period, with additional pickups and reshoots funded as production continued.

Are the live-action cutscenes AI-generated?

No. The team has stressed that the sequences were shot with real actors, practical effects, and a film crew in Buenos Aires, with limited digital work for touch-ups. Two horror short films are effectively embedded in the game as part of its cinematic structure.