Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh

I went into Holy Mountains of Flesh with the quiet hope that smaller studios leave in you when you've seen them grow across several releases. Saibot Studios, based in Argentina's Salta province, set their fourth and final Doorways chapter in a fictionalized version of their own backyard - a floating village above a fiery abyss, ruled by a family accused of cannibalism and black magic. That setup is rich. The execution is a mixed bag, but one worth carefully unpacking. You play Thomas Foster, a special investigator with the supernatural ability to enter the minds of killers. Here his target is Juan Torres, known as 'El Asador,' and the territory he sends you into looks genuinely unlike most horror game environments. Massive rocks drift above lava, the architecture shifts as you progress, and by the late acts the world grows increasingly covered in organic flesh-like material that creeps over every surface. Those visual moments have real craft behind them. The sound design, though, is a different story - there is near-constant ambient noise meant to build dread, but it sits on the wrong side of the line between atmospheric and fatiguing, more Halloween sound pack than considered soundscape. Gameplay sits at an unsteady crossroads. Door-opening and light puzzle-solving are the backbone, but Holy Mountains introduces first-person platforming and a handful of more complex set-pieces, including a revolving rooms sequence that community players have called one of the most demanding puzzles they've encountered. That ambition is admirable. The problem is that excellent ideas often arrive with flawed implementation - puzzles that are obtuse in the wrong ways, monsters that function more as gimmick-based obstacles than genuine threats, and an open village hub area that feels emptier than it should for a game promising a complex story. The story itself, for all its lurid premise, is delivered mostly through scattered notes and audio flashbacks, and it rarely builds to the weight the setup deserves. For those who come in fresh to the series, the good news is that Holy Mountains can be played without the earlier entries. For existing fans, it represents the most polished and mechanically varied chapter, even if it never fully clears the bar it sets itself. Run time sits comfortably around three to four hours - short, but the game knows roughly where its ending is, and the final sequences involving an occult ritual and a confrontation with the series' central antagonist carry genuine atmosphere. This is a game that earns its title more visually than it does narratively, and I wish it had trusted its own unsettling imagery enough to let silence do more work.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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