A little over a year ago and a few years late, I created an official Bloody Disgusting Steam group so those of you who are of the gaming persuasion would have a safe place to geek out, chat and win some of the many horror games I have sitting on my laptop, waiting for me to find them a home.
I have months of giveaways planned for our Steam followers, because — and I hope I don’t sound like literally every character in Furious 7 when I say this — you guys are my family. That’s right, all 22,490+ of you are more precious to me than most of my cousins. Especially Caleb. He had a link to my Amazon wish list and he still gets me a thermos for Christmas. You’re dead to me, Caleb.
At this very moment, I’m giving away TEN copies of the indie horror game Kholat in what may be the easiest giveaway that’s ever been or ever will be. Details can be found over here.
You might remember Kholat as the horror game that released the week before E3, guaranteeing it’d get buried under the mountain of news that comes out of Los Angeles around that time of the year, every year, as it has since the dawn of time. Or since 1995, when E3 had its first show.
The game is based, loosely, on the Dyatlov Pass Incident. This very real and tragic event claimed the lives of nine hikers who had set up camp on Kholat Syakhl, or “Dead Mountain”. Even the half century and change that have passed since that bizarre event hasn’t produced any answers, other than the creepy explanation offered by Soviet investigators back in 1959, who determined the cause of their deaths was an “unknown compelling force”.
Not a particularly revealing explanation, but it does leave room for interpretation. Kholat does exactly that, and so do I when I think about how that conversation played out. Were there any follow-up questions, or did that glacier-eyed boulder of a man simply utter the words “unknown compelling force,” take a shot of vodka and vanish in a plume of smoke that smelled of diced herring? I sincerely hope so.
