Play or Die: How Saw Fumbled Its Own Game

Long before choice-based storytelling became a staple of modern gaming, Saw was already laying down the blueprint. Not in mechanics, but in philosophy. Before players were weighing survival against sacrifice, before stats tracked your morality and branching paths defined your journey, Jigsaw was quietly building something that looked and felt like a twisted morality system. A game where your only options were terrible, and yet still yours to make.

In the films, the premise was more than torture or gore. It was design. Deliberate and psychological. Each trap was its own story. A question. A test. And what made Saw so powerful as a cinematic franchise was that it never let you forget the aftermath. The choice lingered. It festered. The films gave their characters time to process, to scream, to regret. It was not about who escaped. It was about what it cost them.

So when the time came to translate that experience into video games, the potential was massive. But the result? Not even close.

Screenshot taken from Saw gameplay

Where the filmmakers leaned into dread and moral ambiguity, the game developers seemed stuck on blood and puzzles. The Saw games, released for consoles in the late 2000s, tried to replicate the atmosphere of the films but completely misunderstood the soul of the franchise. They had the traps. They had the grime. But they missed the psychology, the emotion, the weight of it all.

And that is the difference.

The Saw films were crafted by people who understood that horror is not just about pain, but about consequence. Jigsaw’s entire motive was rooted in transformation. His victims were not just being punished. They were being confronted with the worst parts of themselves. The writers used the traps as vehicles for philosophical questions. Who deserves redemption? Can people change? What does it mean to truly survive?

Screenshot taken from Saw gameplay

But the game developers treated those same traps like level obstacles.

Gameplay in the Saw games focused on mechanical solutions. Find this. Unlock that. Solve a quick-time event. Move on. There was almost no space to sit with what you had just done. No reflection. No emotional fallout. The games never challenged the player to reckon with the morality of their actions, which, ironically, was the entire point of the films.

Instead of being a layered morality system dressed in horror, the Saw games became glorified haunted houses. You moved through dim corridors, solved basic puzzles, and avoided dying. That was it. You did not feel like you were being watched by Jigsaw. You did not feel the dread of having your next decision carved into your conscience. You just felt like you were playing a game. And not a very good one.

Imagine if they had taken a page from Until Dawn or The Walking Dead. Games that give you just enough freedom to make your choices feel personal, then show you the consequences in brutal, irreversible ways. That is the kind of experience Saw could have pioneered. But instead, the video game versions reduced Jigsaw to a creepy voice on a tape and treated his philosophy like a prop.

That failure is even more jarring when you remember how well the films constructed him as a narrative force. Jigsaw was not a traditional slasher villain. He did not kill. He tested. He orchestrated. He was the architect of every dilemma, the designer of the entire world you were forced to navigate. That makes him less Freddy Krueger, more game master. More dungeon master. A sadistic storyteller with a god complex. If anyone ever made a game with a truly reactive AI narrator based on Jigsaw, it would have changed horror gaming forever.

But again, the Saw games missed that completely.

They did not build tension. They offered no moments of doubt. They gave you a handful of keys, asked you to pick a lock, and called it a moral choice. The disconnect between what the films offered and what the games delivered is a case study in what happens when you copy the aesthetics of a franchise without understanding its emotional logic.

To be fair, horror in gaming has evolved in the years since. Indie titles like SOMA, Mouthwashing, or Detention understand that true fear often comes from helplessness, from confronting something you cannot escape, whether it is a monster or a decision. Big-budget games like The Quarry or The Last of Us Part II force players into deeply uncomfortable spaces and make them sit with what they have done. These games treat the player like Saw treats its victims. They force introspection. They slow things down. They let silence speak.

Screenshot taken from Mouthwashing gameplay

The Saw games, in contrast, just wanted you to get to the next room.

That is why the Saw fanbase has done more to honour the original message than the games ever did. Fans dissect traps like they are boss fights. They argue ethics, motives, and character arcs with more depth than the official game scripts ever offered. Jigsaw has become more than a horror icon. He is a moral puzzle. A character whose ideology is debated across forums and essays, long after his franchise stopped being mainstream.

And still, the games remain an unrealised opportunity. The kind that could be revisited with the right team and a clear understanding of what made Saw work. Not the screams. Not the traps. But the terror of choice. The guilt that follows. The tension of not knowing if you did the right thing. That kind of horror stays with you.

If a new Saw game ever gets made, here is what it would need: agency with consequence. Slow, suffocating pacing. Limited resources. No safety net. A narrator who responds to your actions with disapproval or, worse, quiet understanding. Traps that adapt based on previous choices. NPCs who remember what you did and confront you with it. Environments that reflect your moral path. Multiple endings, none of them good, only degrees of survival.

Until then, we are left with a strange legacy. A horror franchise that accidentally created the blueprint for some of the most thoughtful interactive games of our time, but was failed when bringing it to life, when it had the chance.

Saw asked if we wanted to play. The answer was always yes. But the game that followed just never gave us the one we were promised.