Summary
While some games that are set in Italyuse the location solely for set piece purposes rather than to explore the country’s culture, like Sniper Elite 4, Hitman 2, Battlefield 1, and Uncharted 4, other games do a stellar job of both. There are even a handful that don’t have to be in Italy to represent elements of Italian culture.
Italy is an amazing country with lots of rich history and landmarksdating back to ancient Rome, and many of the games you’ll find here will do it justice. Whether you want to explore information about Italy while completing puzzles or immerse yourself in Italian horror games, historical-based games, or even Soulslikes, these games are molto bene!
Genre(s)
Adventure, Puzzle, Educational
We start first with a mobile game for Android and iOS that’s directly created by the Italian government, specifically the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ITALY. Land Of Wonders is designed as a 3D interactive landscape puzzle experience, with key landmarks labeled across each level. Its goal is to promote Italy’s “rich cultural, artistic, gastronomic and landscape heritage abroad.”
There’s also a wholesome cultural story in this experience. You’ll play Elio, a lighthouse keeper on a quest for 20 sparks to keep the lighthouse light running, who then encounters the five Guardians of Italian culture – Art, Nature, Cuisine, Performance, and Design – along the way. The game additionally includes 600 articles about Italy to learn more about the culture.
Adventure, Visual Novel, Driving
While many video games use the 1970sfor their time period, you haven’t really encountered such a unique one as Wheels of Aurelia. Wheels of Aurelia is a road trip adventure set in the backdrop of Italy’s Roaring ’70s that mixes a branching narrative visual novel system with isometric driving sim gameplay. It’s also said to be inspired by the Italian cinema cult classic Il Sorpasso.
The path you’ll be driving on is the historical Via Aurelia road on the western coast of Italy, a road built by the ancient Romans in 241 B.C. And as Lella, the game’s main protagonist, you’ll meet your fair share of eccentric passengers that have you take them to various destinations along Via Aurelia, with some situations leading to police chases and other riveting turns.
Metascore
75
Italian and horror go hand-in-hand, and Anna is a very interesting indie title from Dreampainters Software that bases its premise around the horrifying folklore of the mountainous Val d’Ayas region of Italy. The legend taking root here is of a lumberjack killing his family in the region, and that’s precisely where the game is set.
You start by being haunted with dreams of a sawmill before your path leads you to it, and it’s there you’ll have to survive and discover the truth about Anna, the woman you’re seemingly destined to meet, with one eerie puzzle environment after another and even more disturbing objects and story content. The 2013 version of Anna offers more improved graphics and heightened gameplay that offers more puzzles and exploration.
With legendary Italian horror filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava, horror cinema is very much engraved in the country’s artistic identity, and some game developers seek to be similar auteurs in the genre through the interactive medium. Italian studio LKA achieves precisely that withMartha is Dead, an unforgettable psychological horror game set in fascist Italy during WWII.
It’s a game dealing with the horrors of grief, abuse, guilt, and sibling death, with very gruesome and dark themes, including the infamously censored scene where you peel off a face. As you’ll notice, the storytelling is largely inspired by Sicilian marionette puppet theater, or Opera dei Pupi, and you may explore real historical locations in the Tuscany region.
The game also supports full Italian, German, or English voice acting.
In between the first two Dead Space games, the EA studio Visceral Games went in a more hack-and-slash route with Dante’s Inferno. Using the early 14th-century Italian poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri as inspiration, the video game story of Dante’s Inferno follows the narrative told in the first part of the text, the eponymous Inferno.
Set during the Third Crusade, you’re the Templar knight Dante guided by the poet Virgil on a quest through the Nine Circles of Hell in hopes of saving your wife Beatrice from Lucifer. The gameplay is highly reminiscent of the original God of War structure and level design, along with the boss battles. Your weapon here is alsoa pretty iconic video game scythe.
A Leonardo Da Vinci Mystery Escape Room Style
Platform(s)
PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Mobile
Puzzle, Mystery, Historical
If you’re familiar with hidden object puzzle games like The Room series by Fireproof Games, The House of Da Vinci is like the Italian Renaissance version and comes from Slovakian developer Blue Brain Games. The setting for the puzzles is da Vinci’s workshop, and the puzzles and rooms are said to be directly based on some of his inventions and the location of Florence, Italy from that period.
The mystery narrativeleading into the puzzles and escape room-style gameplayis that you’re an apprentice of Leonardo da Vinci named Giacomo who’s now looking for the famous inventor after he’s disappeared. With Giacomo and da Vinci’s story told in three games, there are lots of intriguing puzzles and atmospheric 16th-century locations to explore.
Gaming has already seen plenty of dark fantasy Soulslikes rooted in European culture, like Blasphemous and Spanish cultureand Sekiro and Japanese culture, butEnotria: The Last Songputs the Soulslike spotlight on Italian culture. The game is set in the titular fantasy land and the source of all the trouble here is the Canovaccio, an eternal play written by mysterious Authors in need of felling.
The setting is rich, andmany of the enemies reference figures from Italian folklore and pop culture, like Pulcinella, actor and comedian Antonio De Curtis, or Totò, and Monaciello from the Naples-based legend of the robed monk. There will be plenty of explorable regions with reality-altering mechanics, and the Mask-swapping system works almost exactly like classes in Mortal Shell.
From the same Italian studio that brought you Wheels of Aurelia, Santa Ragione also tries its hand in the horror genre of gaming with its 2022 release Saturnalia. It’s an underrated and unique survival horror experience,with rotoscoped graphics, stop-motion films, and comics published by Sergio Bonelli Editore serving as inspirations for the pencil-shaded art style.
If you’re a fan of the mind-bending changes to the environment layout in Alan Wake 2, Saturnalia has a similar mechanic where the Sardinian village you’re in presents a constantly shifting maze of an environment every time you die. You’ll have four different characters to control, who are being hunted and having to piece together a horrifying mystery based on a ritual linked to Sardinian folklore.
Another game blending the genres of Soulslike, action, and horror and borrowing from Italian culture, specifically Italian literature, isLies of P. Although the setting and world are influenced by the Belle Époque era of broadly French and European history, the characters and story are directly adapting the original The Adventures of Pinocchio by 19th-century Italian author Carlo Collodi.
As Pinocchio, you must operate out of Hotel Krat with companions like Geppetto, Sophia the Blue Fairy, and Gemini, and battle difficult bosses inspired by the story.The references to the children’s cautionary fairy tale are plentyand are made even darker and more dreary in the evil puppet and disease-ridden world of Krat. There’s even a character named Lorenzini Venigni that’s a direct homage to the author.
The two most definingAssassin’s Creedgamesfor their assassinations and storiesare centered around Desmond Miles' ancestor Ezio Auditore. Taking you to Florence, Venice, Rome, Monteriggioni, and other locations during the Italian Renaissance, Assassin’s Creed 2 and its 2010 sequel, Brotherhood, are still unmatched when it comes to an open-world video game beautifully representing Italian culture.
After all, the Italian Renaissance era was the cultural and artistic zenith of Italy, where history saw some of its most influential thinkers and renowned painters and sculptors like Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. And the artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci was even your companion who gave you the flying machine and the double hidden blade.
