Developed by Duality Games, Unholy is an unsettling horror experience with puzzle and stealth mechanics offering good gameplay variation. You take on the role of Dorothea shortly after the mysterious disappearance of her child, and traversing the multiple worlds is her only option to find answers.

Throughout these worlds, you will be tasked with completing puzzles, finding clues, and facing the challenge of infiltrating or fighting against enemies.

Starting out in the grey and cold reality of a small town in post-soviet Eastern Europe, you’ll find out about your life and any possible information on where your child might be, and shortly after, you find yourself in-between realities.

This is when Unholy started giving off a great horror feel. Navigating the halls of the old, rundown apartment complex you live in, chasing what you believe is your child, only to have them get further away from you. The setting here is unsettling and spine-shiveringly sets the mood for what Unholy is about.

In the next part, we get to experience the Unholy world, learning to use a slingshot for puzzle mechanics where we are first tasked with shooting a circuit breaker to disable it allowing us to travel forward. This is quite a simple puzzle mechanic, but I believe this will lead to more intricate problems later down the line.

Finally, we get a taste of the threat in Unholy, by using stealth mechanics to navigate around and through a cultist-like ritual, or, using your sling shot again, you have the option to take out any surveillance lights to help conceal yourself or stun enemies if you get detected.

I didn’t fully get into understanding how the masks work, but I did come across some doors that require you to put one on to access the room. I feel there are going to be a lot of in-depth gameplay mechanics tied around changing masks because you can use them to blend in and access areas otherwise inaccessible.

The style and sound of Unholy definitely give off a great horror vibe and certainly sent a shiver or two down my spine, especially at the beginning. However, the game doesn’t seem to hold up to the screenshots and was kind of lacking. I look forward to what improvements Duality Games make to Unholy.

Unholy has potential. The demo I was able to experience is a little too short and doesn’t really show what the game truly has to offer. I can definitely see this being a game I will happily dive into on full release.

Written by: MrVibeAU