[Disclaimer: I received a review key for The Old Flesh of Nuraga from the developer, Studio Ortica. The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played and content be created. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
The Old Flesh of Nuraga
Release Date: August 26, 2026
Systems: Windows, SteamOS, Linux
Publisher: Studio Ortica
Developer: Studio Ortica
Time Spent: 3 Hours
First Play Series on YouTube
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I really enjoyed The Old Flesh of Nuraga, although it took a couple of attempts to get the game working.
I first started playing the game on the Steam Deck, and then the game froze on the first loading screen after telling me, "Load Complete." I exited the game, and it seemed like the Steam Deck restarted, running the randomized startup movie. I assumed that there might be a compatibility issue since the store page only lists Windows 11 as a compatible operating system. I put it in compatibility mode and ran it with Proton Hot Fix. Then, at around 7 minutes, it looked like the game restarted. I played for about 45 minutes on the Steam Deck before calling it quits for the night.
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The next time I started the game up on my laptop, I decided to start a new game from the beginning. That was when I noticed a visual distortion that had also happened when I played it on the Steam Deck. During the game, something we'll get to shortly, there are places you can place artifacts you uncover, and these places are represented by shadowy and globular objects in the shape of the artifact. These objects had a glowing blackness with a glowing white outline to them and would be visible from the moment you were in line of sight of the object. I tried a couple of combinations, turning on/off various toggles in the graphics settings, and what I found that worked best for me was the following:
- Glow: Disabled
- Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
- V-Sync: Adaptive
I'm not sure if other graphical settings would have an effect, but this worked for me on my laptop.
Now that we've got the game to work in a way that was enjoyable, let's get to it.
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The Old Flesh of Nuraga is a game about mythology, stories told to us by past generations, families, religion, archeology, and a healthy dose of cosmic horror. The story follows Cinera and her Grandfather, who are on their way to the Big Boar Fair. While crossing the desert alone and not part of a caravan, their bull Addu dies, and they're forced to camp out at some sand-covered ruins to await the arrival of a caravan that they could then travel with. While waiting, the Grandfather sends Cinera out to look for food, and thus starts what becomes the fundamental gameplay loop for the remainder of the game. Cinera uses her Grandfather's divining bell, just like a divining rod, collects what is under the sand, chips off rock and dirt from the object, then uses a brush to clean the object, then returns to Grandpa with the object, and finally performs an action with the object.
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The act of chipping off bits of rock and debris, followed by brushing off additional dirt and dust from the object, is a very satisfying mechanic. The majority of the objects, about 88%, I uncovered during the course of my first play were story-related, so discovering an object helped forward the story most of the time. Only two instances did I find a piece of broken non-descript pottery that the game deemed worthless, although I'm sure that Dellanos would have felt otherwise. What I really like about this mechanic is that it doesn't particularly add much to the game apart from the player briefly wondering what it is that they dug up and that brief serotonin burst upon discovering that what you have is a unique item. The developers just as easily could have simplified the excavation mechanic to only include locating the object with the divining bell, then pulling the artifact out of the ground without any of the additional actions to clean it. But it's this simple mechanic that solidified the game in my mind when I first played the demo last June.
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As the player uncovers more objects and presents them to Grandpa, he offers to tell Cinera fairy and folk stories about the Nuri, the people who inhabit the island where the game takes place. From these conversations, you are given the option to skip by telling Grandpa that he's already told you them before, or you can lie and say that you've never heard them before; I usually went with lying because it seemed mean-spirited to say otherwise and I wanted to experience more world-building. These stories involved not only the Nuri who populated the island of Nuraga, but their chief god Tor, the demi-god sorcerer Sadur, his aging sister Jana, and a celestial creation myth. By the end of the game, I felt that there was both so much information and so much that was only hinted at that this game/story could be a springboard into a larger exploration of this world.
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I can't really get too much into the story of the game. If I were to go into what happens in the second half of the game that really excited me, I would need to tell you a lot of the story points from the first half because stories build on stories build on stories. Just like in real life. Pretty early on, you find out that there is something going on with the actions you're performing at Grandpa's behest, but the game doesn't really give you the option to not perform the actions. You could not perform the action of putting the Tor idol on the pedestal, but then the game wouldn't register it to move the story along, and you wouldn't be able to pick up another unearthed item because you can only dig up and hold one item at a time.
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The one downside to this otherwise nearly flawless and tight storytelling narrative is that, for me, regardless of where I dug up items, I always dug up the same items in the same order. I always dug up a desert potato, followed by the flute, followed by the Tor idol, followed up by the corpse torso. I have read on the Steam discussion pages of people who have only been able to dig up broken pottery, but those instances were all glitches that occurred under specific circumstances. There is some variation in dialogue choices that looks like it leads to different achievements, but I can't say if the story ends differently in any significant way. There is at least one definite branching path late in the game, possibly one earlier, but after you finish chapters, you're able to replay them at the expense of there only being one save file.
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I really, really enjoyed The Old Flesh of Nuraga, and apart from a couple of bugs and glitches (none were actually game-breaking), I honestly cannot recommend this game enough. I know I have the disclaimer at the top, and that might potentially corrupt such a glowing recommendation, but I felt the same after playing the demo. One of the saddest things for me about accepting Studio Ortica's early release game key was that my positive review on Steam wouldn't mean anything, so I did purchase the Supporter Pack DLC that adds some silly additional content to the game that I have yet to get into. For the cost of less of box of Wheaties, or possibly 20lbs of potatoes, The Old Flesh of Nuraga is a short and fun experience if you're at all into games that deal with families, archeology, mythology, and cosmic horror.
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