Exploring Nuragic Sardinia Through a Survival Horror Game

Ancient settings in games usually mean Rome, Greece, Egypt or the Vikings. Nuragic Sardinia almost never comes up. Yet it has everything a game world needs: architecture you can recognise from a mile away, a harsh landscape, and a past full of unanswered questions.

The towers

Nuraghi are towers of stone laid without mortar, sometimes standing alone, sometimes joined into fortresses with several towers and curtain walls. Sardinia has around seven thousand of them. In Shardana, the Santu Antine nuraghe is the landmark the whole island is read from: you can see it from almost anywhere, and at night it is the only still shape on the horizon.

It is not just scenery. You can build one of your own, stone by stone, along with dolmens and a stepped altar inspired by Monte d’Accoddi.

The tombs

Giants’ tombs are collective burials with a large stele and a stone forecourt. The older domus de janas are tombs cut into the rock: folk tradition calls them “fairy houses”. In the game they are places to find, and some lead underground, into the Realm of the Janas.

Bronze and water

The Nuragic people cast bronze into bronzetti, small statues of warriors, chiefs and offerants. In Shardana, bronze is the material of the best weapons and the most important gifts. Groundwater was kept in sacred wells, temples with a staircase leading down into the dark: in the village, the well is where you drink, talk and sometimes stay alive.

The Shardana

The game takes its name from the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples mentioned in Egyptian sources. Their link to Sardinia is a hypothesis debated by scholars, not an established fact. Shardana uses it as the starting point for a work of fiction: a warrior of that people, shipwrecked on an island of stone towers.

What is real and what is not

The monument types, many objects, the crafts and the traditions are drawn from real ones. Nura is not: it is a fictional island. The story, the characters and above all the infection are invented. Shardana is not a historical reconstruction: it is a work of fiction inspired by Nuragic Sardinia.

If you want to walk among these stones, the free demo puts you on the shipwreck beach, a short walk from Santu Antine. The world of Shardana page collects the places and legends in one spot.