I managed to include Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh in my picks for the best horror games of 2015 before this review was finished, so in a way I’m burying the lead here, but rest assured: I’ll go into more depth here about what I consider to be a superb horror-puzzle adventure game.
For my money, the Doorways franchise is kind of like Hellraiser: The Game (and not the unreleased 1990 NES title, either.) Holy Mountains of Flesh is the fourth chapter but the third game in the series, each volume of which explores the themes and the consequences of evil in a pseudo-religious context. The newest game revolves around a guy named Juan Torres and rumors of kidnapping, cannibalism, and black magic in a rural region of Argentina, which happens to be the home of the studio itself.
Like with the other games, the narrative unfolds around the main character seeking out and sort of ‘ghostbusting’ the subject, at hand. Notes and diary entries lay scattered around the environments, revealing backstory to lead exploration through the world. You will encounter puzzles, platforming, and jump scares.
The basic point is this: the new Doorways is flawed in some similar ways as the previous chapters, but Holy Mountains of Flesh shows a huge amount of potential for the future of both this series and the developer. It looks like Saibot Studios heeded the criticism of the other games and forged ahead with renewed vision, striving to make a game that was functional, entertaining and creepy.
Technically, Holy Mountains of Flesh is still in early access, since only the first Act of the game has been released, but it’s enough of a vision into what the devs have planned to be able to review. Even though the playthrough will only take a few hours, at most, the puzzles are less arcane than in Doorways 1 & 2 and propel the action taking place, rather than hindering it in some fundamentally frustrating way. Therefore, Doorways rises above the chaff of the surfeit of horror games being released on Steam right now.
First of all, the graphical fidelity in Holy Mountains of Flesh shows marked improvement from previous chapters, and not merely because they’ve upgraded to Unity 5. The art style is more distinct, less plagued by the sometimes generic look of indie Unity-developed horror games.
The textures are richer and pronounced, character movement and environmental animations are natural in a way they weren’t before, and the world is more fully realized than plenty of other games in the genre, at this point.
While the second chapter improved mightily on the first, this game reaches a new height for the series, in terms of art direction. The school just looks really good. The environments make more logistical sense, and the art style caters to them to make a mood which strikes closest to the game’s main thematic aims. The school is dark and abandoned but also carries with it an otherworldliness that is both intriguing and existentially unsettling.
The impressive visuals are ameliorated by a witty, if not novel, approach to the use of light and dark. Rather than merely use darkness as a means for creeping out the audience, Holy Mountains of Flesh incorporates it subtly into the puzzles, forcing players to think about how to progress through certain parts of the schoolhouse.
Granted, there are still places where the design is flawed. At one point, the world shifts, creating artificial barriers to player exploration that feel sort of half-assed, conceptually. Those kinds of decisions, whether budgetary in nature or intentionally designed, are what give me pause about games like Doorways.
It’s sometimes not clear whether the configuration of levels ends up the way they do because the development team made a conscious choice, or if the limitations forced them into that direction. Still, there are far fewer middling design choices here than in most indie horror games I’ve played in the past year.
Game performance is another plus for this iteration of the Doorways series. While the framerate was never a major issue in past versions, it is particularly smooth here. Also, the frame rate is markedly improved over the other games of this type, even if it still has the weird save function that causes the screen to blink to black before fading back in. I didn’t experience any major hitching or dropped frames, and the game ran smoothly throughout, which definitely sets it apart.
The mechanics remain simple. Opening doors is still the major function of gameplay, but the game introduces some new mechanics that can be used to solve puzzles and travel from section to section. Also, I have to say this: I’ve always, always hated first-person platforming in games of this type, but the jumping in Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh — or at least how they use it here — completely works. The platforming, rather than being an awkward means of hopping on impossible surfaces, relates to minor puzzles and actually gives the game some interesting depth.
It also isn’t a tedious pixel-hunt for hidden items, either, which made parts of the early games nearly impossible to enjoy. Perhaps that can be blamed on the popularity of Slenderman-style games at the time of the first chapter’s release, but whatever the cause, this time around, interactions with the world are more satisfying. The puzzles are well-designed, even if they are largely logistically simple, and you don’t have to fight with the mechanics in order to be able to complete them.
I’ve spent a lot of space in this review comparing Holy Mountains of Flesh to Prelude and The Underworld, so in a sense it doesn’t stand on its own as well as it probably should, as a review. I recognize that. However, what should be taken from it is the fact that these games always had potential; they just didn’t have the follow-through to make them what the devs probably had in mind. Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh is easily one of the best horror games I played in 2015, and the best part about it is that there will be more.
The Final Word: Even though the game is in Early Access, let’s hope that Saibot Studios will be able to continue evolving in a positive way on its original idea.
