Fugaz

About Fugaz

Fugaz is the second game from Spheanix, a solo developer from Galicia in Spain who also made Paplion. It came out on Steam for Windows on 7 July 2026, and its maker describes it as a dark, immersive horror puzzle game where your only tool is a flute.

You wake in a bare room with a passage leading north. A sign gives you the first rule: if you ever feel lost, try exploring another place. Soon you find the flute on a pedestal, and from then on the game is about music sheets: each sheet holds a song, played as a short sequence of notes, and each song does something to the rooms around you. You need no knowledge of music to play.

The world is not linear. Progress depends on what you know rather than what you carry: a new rule learned in one room is often the answer to a room you gave up on earlier. The map keeps a note on every room you have seen, marks the ones where there is more to know, and lets you place markers. Players and the puzzle site Thinky Games put it among the metroidbrainias, games in the line of Outer Wilds, and one reviewer compares its songs to the ocarina of Ocarina of Time. Time is short: after a while the screen goes black and you start over, keeping only what you have learned.

The horror is quiet. The rooms are drawn in minimal white lines on dark, glitching backgrounds, the music is ominous, and the darkness is always closing in. The maker says that everything in the game has a meaning and that its dialogues and puzzles touch on sensitive psychological topics through symbolism and allegory, so working out the story is a puzzle of its own. There are no monsters to run from and no jump scares mentioned by players; one critic found that it tries hard to look dark, and some players call it more strange than frightening.

It suits players who like cryptic, knowledge-based puzzle games with a dark mood and a story to decode, and who do not mind a time limit that sends them back to the start.

How to play Fugaz

1. Explore the first rooms and read the signs; they teach the rules the world runs on.
2. Pick up the flute and play the song on your first music sheet in the room where it fits.
3. Collect more music sheets and switch between them to try different songs in different rooms.
4. When a room stumps you, move on: the map notes it and a rule you learn elsewhere may solve it.
5. When the darkness ends a run, start again and use what you have learned to get further, faster.

Tips

• Keep a real notebook beside you for songs and rules; players who did found the later puzzles easier.
• Check the map often: room notes update as you learn, and a starred note means there is more to find.
• Put markers on the map for rooms you want to come back to before the time runs out.
• A player warns that some late puzzles are awkward on a Steam Deck; a keyboard is the safer choice.
• Play the free demo too. A player says it has its own set of puzzles, separate from the full game, so it spoils nothing.

Questions