Developed by Duality Games, Unholy is an unsettling horror adventure set in two parallel worlds. Explore both reality and a dark unholy world to unveil the mysterious disappearance of your child, all while finding clues, solving puzzles, and deciding whether to sneak or take on brutal enemies as you stand up against a dangerous cult.

Playing as Dorothea, a young mother after losing her child to a religious cult known as Spring of Eternity. Her only option is to traverse into another very dark and sinister realm full of cultists and other unlively things such as ghouls, though to get there, she needs a spiritual guide. After heading back to your father’s apartment, you meet an old crone ready to help you get where you need to be by using an arcane ritual, and then guiding you through this other world.

Starting off with a strong premise and a seemingly great plot, it quickly falls through and starts to become a rather boring journey. The story, for me, felt like it dragged, as it wasn’t really giving any interesting twists, or eventful moments to re-peak my interest. Although the world and setting were great and atmospheric for the most part, it was not scary enough to be considered much of a horror. I was expecting to have some chills sent down my spine or be scared into jumping out of my chair while playing.

One of the main gameplay mechanics you’ll experience is stealth, sneaking around guards and ghouls hoping not to get caught. If you get spotted there’s really not a whole lot you can do to fight back, and most of the time, your only option is going to be to run away and hide. The only way to combat and take out enemies is to use the explosive tanks and traps that have been pre-placed in the world.

Armed with a slingshot, you’ll soon find a small array of ammunition in the form of emotion. Plucked from dead bodies, equipment, or small deposits, you’ll find a few variations of ammo types that unfortunately are not super useful against combatants, instead, they’re more so used to complete puzzles. The first ammo type you’ll find is Shock, useful for frying power circuits, mostly for opening doors, and further into your adventure, you’ll come across Sadness, which is practically just smoke bombs to conceal yourself. Eventually, you’ll come across a couple more types to aid you, and fortunately, you won’t have to worry about running out. There’s usually an abundance nearby when you need it.

Puzzles would be another major mechanic of Unholy, so you could expect a good variety of puzzles to complete and for them to be somewhat challenging. This is, however, not so much the case. They tend to get quite repetitive early on, whether it’s finding a combination for a lock or shooting out the circuit board. There were a few more that required you to collect specific items to, say, fix a valve or something, but these weren’t very often and you only really find them at major plot points.

I was hoping for a little more from the masks. The first mask you get is really useful, acting as a veil to reveal interactive items in the world, and later being upgraded to act as a gas mask and thermal vision for late-game areas. It would have been nice if this would stay active when using your slingshot. Speaking of upgrades, there is a small skill system in the game where you’ll be able to upgrade ammo capacity and acquisition, along with a few movement upgrades, and the points for these are acquired by collecting mementos, essentially collectibles. This, to me, seemed kind of pointless in such a linear story.

One thing Unholy did very well was the world and atmosphere. It is pretty strange to have a city in ruins and on fire everywhere you look, however, it was very dark and sinister and gave a presence of an overpowering cult taking control over everything around it, and this is accompanied by a great soundtrack that gives off the right audio queues at the perfect moments. Even if they missed the ball on the horror side of things, the all-around design was nice.

Unholy started off strong right at the beginning be fell short pretty quickly, becoming repetitive and uninteresting as I ventured further into the story. It involves what I see as an unnecessary skill point system and a lack of options for dealing with enemies. With the only options being to sneak past or try and lead them into traps, it feels more like a stealth game than a horror.

Written by: MrVibeAU