Can you survive your own version of Dante’s Inferno?

The world knows the Divine Comedy as a poem. For your family, it is a prison. As Gabriele Alighieri, you inherit a duty: reseal the gates of Hell. Burdened by fate, you descend into a psychological nightmare where the only escape is to uncover the dark secrets of your ancestors.

For those unfamiliar with The Divine Comedy poem, The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline will have a few scratching their heads. But you don’t necessarily need to know the ins and outs of the poem to understand the game’s story as it is told in a way that it isn’t essential to know it. The game itself is a first-person walking simulator with puzzles thrown in.

The puzzles themselves are a bit on the tough side and I came across some stumbling blocks on a few of them, so be prepared for that. There’s also a number of collectibles scattered around the family home and different “dive” locations which are needed if you want to earn that Platinum trophy. There’s also a really obscure collectible hidden away towards the end of the game, which was annoying to obtain if missed due to the lack of a chapter select. Essentially, I had to run through the game again to nab it and with no way of skipping dialogue or cutscenes either, so be wary of moving on to the next section if you want to get everything done in one playthrough.

First time through took me a few hours to finish, the second playthrough about half that since I knew all the solutions and just raced through as much as possible. The story itself was an intriguing one, and I loved the overall tone of the game with Gabriele and the ancestor guiding him through his own version of Hell. Voice-acting is impressive throughout, though I did find some of Gabriele’s dialogue to be a bit whiny, but considering the burden he is under at this point…I probably would be as well.

Visually, the game looks stunning and while there were a few framerate drops in areas, recent patches have improved this. Gabriele’s version of Hell is a twisted landscape that has a macabre look to it but is also beautiful in some ways. Gabriele even mentions this in a line saying he’d love to capture it in a painting. I didn’t come across any glitches during my playthrough and was overly impressed with the puzzles; they really got my head ticking in all directions.

The Verdict

The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline is a short, but sweet walking simulator with puzzles. It has a great story, looks amazing and handles well. The lack of a chapter select and skipping dialogue makes a replay a bit of a chore if you miss a collectible or two, but other than that this is well worth a dive into.

Score: 7.5