Welcome to The Attic, deep within the Ural mountains.

Kholat is a game for which I had high hopes, but I finished it with mixed emotions. The game was inspired by the real life Dyatlov Pass Incident, as it is known by most. In case you haven’t heard of the story, I’ll give you all a run-down of the basics. A group of nine hikers, led by Igor Dyatlov, went missing while on a trip through the Ural mountains in 1959. Time passed and after family and friends realized it had been too long since they had heard from them, search parties were sent out to look for the missing hikers.

Their bodies were discovered among a grisly sight, and an investigation began to discover what had happened to them. To start, their tent had been ripped open… from the inside. It was as if they cut the tent to escape something, but what? They had all run off in different directions, and their bodies were found in different locations. Some of the hikers were found with just socks, barefoot, or just one shoe on, as if they had rushed off frantically in the middle of the night. A few of them were discovered with scratches on their legs and arms near the remnants of a campfire, and it appeared to the investigators that they had tried to climb a nearby tree, possibly to look for something. These two were also found wearing only their underwear. A few of the bodies took two more months to find, as they were buried under snow. These hikers had more clothes on, and were apparently found with some articles of clothing that belonged to the others. These were discovered with severe internal injuries which were compared to that of a car accident. Brute force caused these injuries, but what was it? Some of them were even reported to have orange-tinted skin, which puzzled the investigators. There were also high levels of radioactivity found on their clothes.

Another group of hikers reported that they had seen strange orange spheres in the night sky towards the direction that the nine hikers had been. Ever since their bodies were found, people have speculated what may have caused this incident. In the end it was determined they all died of a “compelling natural force.” Some theorize an avalanche caused the incident, others believe it was local natives, secret government cover-ups, UFOs, or any number of other paranormal events. What exactly happened to these hikers? We’ll probably never know for sure, but it certainly makes for an interesting unsolved mystery, and now, a video game. So now that we’ve covered the true story, let’s move on to the game…

By far my favorite part of this game is the beautiful graphics

Like I said before, I had extremely high hopes for Kholat. Not only does the real life story fascinate me (as all unsolved mysteries do) but I’m also a big fan of horror games. To top it off, the narrator is Sean Bean who I just love. It seemed this game would have the perfect recipe for a good scary experience.

Kholat is creepy, but it doesn’t try too hard to scare you. The location is eerie enough and they rely mostly on that to give you chills. It is both smart and effective to use this approach, and I wish more horror games would try that. I use the term horror loosely, as it is more of a creepy mystery, but there were a few times I felt genuinely scared. Aside from the locale giving you the willies, there is a monster you want to avoid in this game. There is no combat so your only hope to stay alive is to run away from it, but you have limited stamina and can only run for short bursts so use it wisely! There is a save system, but it only autosaves when you get to certain locations like a camp or when you find a note. It can get very frustrating when you’re lost and all you want to do is save but you have to keep venturing on and on…

I LOVE games that don’t hold your hand. I appreciate and respect that choice, and wish more games would just let us figure stuff out. However, there is a line here, and unfortunately Kholat took this too far.

You start off with a map, a compass, and a journal. There is no indication of where you’re supposed to go except for coordinates scrawled on the top left of your map. I’m all for a game that doesn’t utilize a HUD or mini-map because that can take away from the immersion. But I felt as though it was difficult to read my map at times, and there is no marker of where you are, so if you get lost… good luck. To boot, the monster is attracted to your flashlight you use when viewing the map, and so to avoid certain death I kept getting lost. It may sound cool in theory to use a map that doesn’t help you (just like in real life! Fun!) but when you have nothing to do but walk and find notes or the occasional camp, finding your way back to a location ends up frustrating instead of immersive. Yes, the majority of what you find is just news articles and notes. And this is where it gets even more confusing…

The notes are from two different people, a woman that was in the Dyatlov group and was journaling about their experiences. The other notes are from a man… I don’t want to give too much away but I’ll just say he begins to sound a bit unstable, and you quickly wonder what’s driven him to this insanity. But who is he? Why is he there? Is he connected to the group? Did he kill them? This is where I grow mad myself just trying to figure this game out.

Your journal keeps a log of notes and news clippings you come across

You are never even told who you are. There are pieces of a story along the way, but how are you connected? All you know is that you start off near a train station by yourself. There is no one around and all you can do is wander into the woods until a cutscene starts.. and the game never makes sense after that. There is a voice that talks to you, but I have no idea who that is. Is my character just nuts and hearing voices? Is this a spirit guiding me? Am I insane? Am I that tenth hiker that left the group due to illness just before they ventured out for that fateful last time? Am I the one writing those notes I find? Am I looking for the group or the missing man? What is this monster? Is this before, right after, or years after the group went missing? What year is it? So many questions flying through my mind but even as the final cutscene closes and I am dropped unceremoniously back to the main menu I scream at the game that I want answers.

This title may be better suited for another gamer, but personally I have to say I’m quite disappointed in how it was executed. They had a great concept, setting and story to work with, and all of that fell flat aside from the beautiful visuals. They took far too little from the Dyatlov story. I understand that they wanted to keep this vague, as the real story is vague, but if you’re going to incorporate it into your story give me more. Let me come across their camp and explore it. Let me start off talking to other people at the station and tell me that I’m an investigator or even a relative looking to find out what happened. You don’t need to be cute or this vague and confusing to incorporate a completely different story with an unsolved mystery into a scary video game. You don’t need to complicate the story lines so much, it will almost always kill the fun. And that ending… I have read about how great it is, but it left me shaking my head. Not in wonderment but in disappointment.

When one plays a video game, one typically wants some level of satisfaction or some feeling that you accomplished or learned something. Leaving a game with more questions than answers is only acceptable when you at least feel you know who your character was or why they were there. What they set out to do and why. I’m not asking for much here. I had no connection to any aspect of the game so I left it simply not even caring. Out of curiosity, I took to a Steam forum thread to see what others thought about it. I was hoping I was missing something, but it seems everyone has their own theory about everything. Nobody knows anything, and that drives me mad. It leaves me with an empty, incomplete feeling. There are enough hints that I wonder if the writers were trying to get something across and failed, or if they wanted to leave everything up to our imagination. I do apologize for lack of in-game screenshots I usually try to leave you with, but I felt more compelled to be a smart ass and use quotes to entertain you all.

Kholat recently had a decent sale price on Steam, but I can only recommend buying this game if you can get it pretty cheap. It may drop a lot during the Halloween sale so maybe keep an eye out for it then if you’d still like to give it a go. It wasn’t terrible, but it left me with such a mixture of emotions that I can say it was decent at best. Some aspects I liked, but most of the game was frustrating. I’ll leave you with a creepy little YouTube video about the real incident to enjoy.

Stay scared,
Dark Princess