Kholat

"Kholat" is not for everybody. I've seen many dismiss it as a mere walking simulator; indeed, your direct interaction is limited to moving about and pressing a key to collect clues. But if you take joy in meandering about the woods, observing, speculating, and paying attention to obscure details, you might be in for a treat. You'll be advancing at your own pace and direction with no explicit orders; you'll only receive a map and some coordinates. You'll have to actually read the map - the game doesn't mark your position, only the landmarks as you uncover them. If you find most of the notes and articles spread all over the land (keep your eyes open for coordinates scribbled on terrain for more clue locations), the contextual info will be just enough to piece together the story. Recognition & nostalgia bonus for people of Finno-Ugrian kin and/or post-Soviet background.

The atmoshpere in Kholat is simply amazing, which most who have played this game probably will attest to. What adds to this is the feeling of a constant, looming threat. The lighting, music, weather effects and ambience all work together to form an ever present feeling of dread. These are also the factors that Kholat rely and ride on. The story sometimes feels formulaic and unnecessarily convoluted. I like a game where you have to figure things out for yourself, but here you never feel that you get the answers you were promised to the question "What really happened in Dyatlov Pass?" Kholat can probably be considered a walking simulator, even though you get things to do and threats to avoid. What really heightens the level of realism is the fact that you get a compass and a map, but have to figure out where on the map you are for yourself. I.e. you can easily get lost while exploring the open game world. All in all, Kholat is a fascinating game where the atmosphere and environment makes up for the lack of interesting story.

This took me 7 hours and 47 minutes to finish. It was super atmospheric and I was scared most of the time. I really enjoyed just walking around feeling lonely in these mountains. And sometimes after only trees, snow and rocks, you saw something interesting and it all got more exciting. However, one thing that really annoyed me was the balance between daylight and night. Act 1 was my favorite with that beautiful looking train station and that lovely singing. It really made me want to keep playing the game immediately. Then it was all night the rest of the game. I was really looking forward to see the daylight again at some point, but noo. The compass was a bit hard to read at first, but it also felt quite realistic. I got used to it after a while. I did not totally get the whole plot though, but I suppose that was the point with the game. I would have put 5 stars if it was a bit longer + some more daylight and maybe a proper outro with some more explanation of the story and maybe some more time on that train station. But yeah, it's a good game for sure. I've never seen anything like this before.

Graphics artists got together and decided to create a game about a historical mystery. They got started on a visually impressive game, and at some point had a meeting where they realized they are making a video game and there's nothing to play in what they've created so far. They added monsters that didn't really do anything but occasionally require the player the press the sprint button for a couple of seconds or die and have to re-trek all the way to the monster location. There is no story, but only segments of aristic poetry that tries hard to ask big questions about fear, but ultimately is incoherent rambling without focus. The usage of the map and compass was great and I hoped the game was entirely like this with none of the monster nonsense. I only wish there was some sort of reward for finding the locations on the map instead of getting more writing that didn't matter at all. The game was probably going to be a horror game, but there really wasn't anything to be afraid of: The monsters were shown early in the game and were mostly annoying. The only remotely scary aspect of the game were the sudden jumpscare soundtrack pieces that occasionally play for seemingly no reason, unless I missed something going on somewhere I was supposed to look.