The mystery surrounding the disappearance of nine hikers in the Ural mountains in 1959 has spawned dozens of theories and perhaps as many dramatic reimaginings. Not only that, the truth is equally as unsettling as the fictional counterparts.

The Dyatlov Pass incident involved nine hikers ripping through their tents and fleeing barefoot through deadly cold temperatures, and while none of them sustained defensive wounds indicative of an attack, two died from skull fractures and the rest froze to death.

The case remains largely unsolved, which has only fed the rumor mill of mystical speculation. It’s a chilling scenario, and a reminder of the violence that exists somewhere between humanity and the beyond.

Which sets the stage for Kholat, named after a geographical area surrounding the Dyatlov Pass. Based on the description above, you’d probably be surprised to find out that the game itself is kind of a mixture of Dear Esther and John Carpenter’s The Thing.

With a solid score, beautifully-rendered environments, and a learning curve that requires more than merely pixel hunting, Kholat is a bizarre but enjoyable game for the horror fan who’s seen everything.

Let’s start where the game excels. Graphically, Kholat is a piece of work. It does suffer from some lagginess and framerate issues, at times, but for the most part, the world is about as wonderfully conceived as a barren wasteland can be, and it provides the game with a depth many similar titles just don’t have.

It’s easy to get lost in the world, both literally and figuratively, but that’s okay, given the lushness of the surroundings. Not to mention the fact that it’s also a pretty big world, as well. But we’ll get to the ample, Mordor-ish levels of walking you’ll endure in a little while.

I must also take the time to say that Kholat takes its sweet time. With every possible moment, the game is an exercise in forced patience. You walk — it’s very cold, y’all — and can only run for moments before giving out of breath. Imagine an emphysematic octogenarian, and you’re on the right track.

Everything about the game is…intentional. Your trek along the frozen pathways in an attempt to find several specific longitudinal areas significant to the game’s plot, and sometimes it will require Herculean patience. Before I actually recognized the endgame, I kind of wandered around for hours, just kind of hoping to land on the right gameplay method to figure things out.

But Kholat isn’t structured that way. The game bends your playstyle to its will, and the sooner you give in, the better off you’ll be. See, the walk-aimlessly-until-you-find-something method will only get you so far. You’ll actually need to rely on your trusty compass / map combination to get where you need to go. Otherwise, you’ll just walk in wide, confusing circles until you get frustrated and give up.

And that’s basically the whole game. It sounds boring, but it’s not. I loathed my first few hours of the game, but only because I played it the way I mentioned above. Had I dug in and figured out the basic mechanics sooner, I would have had plenty of fun with it in the beginning. Once I started to use the map and compass, to really play it like a true adventure game with puzzle-y elements, only then did I catch what the game was putting out there.

It’s really about coordinating the compass and the map to find the game’s different areas. I got into a rhythm with it and had some fun, especially once I uncovered the first few area checkpoints.

Along the way, you’ll encounter fiery shades that will kill you outright, and you’ll die if you tumble off the side of a cliff, but for the most part the game’s horror is derived from its sense of atmosphere. You won’t die very often, but when you do, it will be frustrating, especially if you’re looking for a particular spot on the map and get sent back to your last save point.

Luckily, there’s a rudimentary fast travel system. You have to unlock various tents around the map, and even finding journal entries will save the game, but you can save and move around with some quickness, if you need to. It’s not altogether daunting if you keep the game’s main focus in mind. It’s easy to get caught up in listening out for the scattered journal pages left in the snow (a la Slender: The Eight Pages), but the actual in-game story stuff should only take 4-5 hours to beat.

Nevertheless, Kholat has its fair share of problems, and they cannot be ignored. It’s a fairly shallow game, in terms of not just mechanics but variety of experiences. When I say that you’ll be wandering around a lot, that is no joke. Walking is the game, and the only real break comes when you glance down at the map or listen to audio logs. Other than that, it’s snowy drifts for you.

Plus, the load times are epic. They are more than epic. They are mega epic. Several times, I thought my computer had frozen — see what I did there? — before realizing that, no, it was just that Kholat loads like a PS1-era game.

The most damning criticism of the game comes in the form of story. As a minor fan of unsolved murders — hey, I write for a horror site — there’s a lot to be interested in with the Dyatlov Pass incident. Unfortunately, very little of the interesting stuff makes it into the game.

For me, the story in Kholat was a bunch of pseudo-scientific and overtly mystical gobbledygook, and I’m a fan of mystical gobbledygook, generally. It doesn’t really make any sense, and when combined with an ending that is equally as obtuse, the effect of finishing the game is kind of a letdown.

The voice acting is good — Sean Bean makes an appearance as the ostensible narrator — but there just isn’t enough of it. Some of the journal entries have a voice actor, and some do not, and I often found myself waiting for it to begin before just reading it myself. A few more voiced interludes would have added some weight and some heft to the otherwise anemic story beats within the game.

My second biggest complaint about is that the environment is really the star, and so it should also be the main villain. Sure, falling off the side of a mountain is deadly, and some booby traps mark a few spots in the forest, but the temperature acts only as a mere impediment to traversal, not as a real threat or danger in the game. I could honestly care less about the demonic spirits wandering around the snow, because there is something fundamentally more horrifying about the natural phenomena extant on this side of a mountain that could be plumbed for material.

Overall, Kholat presents an interesting addition to the abundance of horror-adventure games of the last few years. It’s got enough style to balance out the underwhelming substance of the story. It looks great, plays pretty well, and presents some interesting visual aesthetics.

The Final Word: Give Kholat a try if you’re a fan of Dear Esther or Slender: The Eight Pages and want something a little off the beaten path.