Let's Talk About Unholy
3.0Overall Score
Reader Rating: (1 Vote)

Unholy has finally made its way to consoles, friends, which means I now have the means to play! And play I have been. It has been a while, but you may remember last year when I talked about the demo for this indie horror. Sadly, my PC was not powerful enough to run it well, so I’ve been waiting on the edge of my seat for the console launch. Duality finally gave us that on September 13th. Let’s jump right into things.

What is Unholy?

Unholy is a first-person psychological adventure horror, developed by Duality Games and published by HOOK. We play as Dorothea, a woman who has lost her only child, a son, at the hands of a malicious cult. Unable to accept what has happened, Dorothea embarks on an adventure between two worlds in an attempt to essentially resurrect her son.

Unholy blends various styles on gameplay, including exploration, stealth, and puzzle solving. While in the Unholy world, you are also hidden behind a mask that you can upgrade and improve upon. Your weapon is a slingshot, powered by different emotions: anger, sadness, fear and desire.

Very interestingly, the visuals of the game are based on the art of Tomasz Strzałkowski, art director and founder of Duality Games.

An Unholy adventure?

I think the best way to describe Unholy as a whole is interesting. The story of a grieving parent isn’t new in the horror space, nor is the involvement of a cult. Cults have actually seemed to be on the rise again in the genre as a whole, almost like a resurgence. Unholy also gives us a guide-like figure in the other world. This figure is an elderly lady, who seems to know far too much about what’s happening to be totally innocent. I’ve been around the block enough to know not to trust the kindly old lady. Personally, I don’t feel like anything particularly new or innovative was done with the story to make it stand out. That’s not to say it’s bad, just that it doesn’t particularly break the mould.

It still contains its own charm to an extent, especially with the recovering of memories throughout each chapter. I found this to be a nice touch, especially as a way to develop Dorothea as more than just the grieving mother.

The Downfall

Where I do have issues with Unholy is with the gameplay. The controls as a whole feel a bit on the clunky side, but the combat is what really shows it. I do need to state upfront, I’m not sure if this is bug related or an actual implementation. I have not actually seen a patch come through since launch, so I can’t actually test this.
However no matter how many times I reset, I ran into this every single time. I could not get my slingshot to unsheathe if an enemy saw me. Running is janky, so there has been essentially no way for me to avoid deaths without mastering stealth. The time it takes to actually raise the slingshot after being hit is also so slow that the enemy can get its final blow in before you can defend at all. Frustrating doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface here. Especially as the stealth mechanics just aren’t great.

Truth be told, this is something that completely took me out of the game. It became less about progressing the story, and more about getting through really irritating sections. Sadly, those sections became more frequent the further into the game I went. After a while, I just totally stopped enjoying Unholy as a whole. It just became a chore.

Unholy Ending

I really wanted to like Unholy. I enjoyed the demo, even though I had performance issues on my pc. But when push comes to shove, something was missing from the overall game. It has some really interesting concepts, like the usage of emotions as ammo, and the mask. But paired with everything else, it just falls flat. Hopefully, the big issue I had is bug related. I’d be more than willing to give Unholy another shot if that (rather large) aspect was fixed. Until then though, I don’t know if I can really recommend this. Maybe it runs better on PC, with less issues. My PC isn’t powerful enough to test that out. If anyone is playing on pc, or has done already, let me know if you ran into the same problems I did! I’d love to hear from you!

Until the next game, friends. Let’s hope things pick up for us.

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About The Author

Jade is a 27 year old horror queen (her words), artist and gamer. She's also a bit too obsessed with dinosaurs. When she's not writing or in game, Jade can normally be found buried in some kind of art.

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