Developer: Saibot Studios
Publisher: Saibot Studios
Platform: PC
Doorways: The Underworld – Review
There are a lot of horror games coming out lately but most of them turn out lacking or simply not fun. About a week ago, Saibot Studios released Doorways: The Underworld. It’s time to take a look at the third chapter of Doorways games!
Story
You play as Thomas Foster, a Doorways agent sent to get rid of a psychopath on the loose. Your target is Katherina Stein, a neurosurgeon by profession. The agency has reason to believe she is involved in the disappearance of over 50 people over the last nine years. Other agents have tried before you and failed, you are the last hope to get rid of this monster. In order to help you on your journey, you use your psychic abilities to look through her eyes and locate her, maybe it was a wrong call to pursue her… As you start the game, you find yourself in an underground lair filled with halls and chambers. You soon realize it’s the dungeon of the doctor and you relive all the horrors that took place there.
Graphics
The graphics could be better but most of the time it isn’t really disturbing. The game is dark but sometimes it’s so dark that you can’t even see what you’re doing, even with a flashlight. Apart from that, the game runs pretty smooth and is fairly pleasant to the eye. The menu itself has a couple of customization but it’s nothing too crazy, it’s also very annoying to navigate through because you have to use the directional keys to select and click to continue instead of completely using the mouse to navigate.
Sound
First of all, the atmosphere that this game creates with simply its sound is astounding. The music slowly builds up and puts a lot of pressure on the player, but most of the times when it gets loud, nothing happens. The sound is great but it just needs that follow up of the gameplay in order to become even better. The game is also completely voice-overed. It’s nicely done but it just needs a little something more. It sounds very monotonous at times and you just can’t really “feel” the character being scared.
Gameplay
The gameplay is of course also a very important aspect in a horror game, and to summarize this game’s gameplay: repetitive but it can catch you off guard!
As you first start playing, you might feel that the mouse has slight input delay. For most games it’s really annoying but it actually felt quite good with this game. I’m usually not a fan of these sorts of things but it kind of felt “natural” and wan’t that disturbing at all. For the rest of the controls, you only have your directional keys and tab. Tab brings up a menu where you can read notes or use items. Again, this menu has to be navigated with the directional keys and a mouse click to advance, which makes it pretty annoying to take out item because it takes up some time.
“You cannot confront him!”
The first couple of minutes simply consist of searching cells and looking for notes and keys to open doors. It’s pretty boring at first but soon enough you encounter your first “enemy”. It’s one of the experiments of the doctor, as you can read on the notes throughout the level. The game uses a stealth mechanic to deal with enemies rather than head-first approaches, which makes it pretty scary when you’re hiding in a dark corner while hoping the monster won’t catch you.
Other than that, the game consist of little puzzles to make you advance through the levels. The puzzles aren’t really all that hard and simply consist of grabbing keys, valves or pictures in order to solve them. When picking up items, there’s also a pretty neat (but slow) animation to pick them up. Selecting items also shows an animation but then they’re just “there”, floating on the screen without a hand to carry it.
The puzzles in general lack creativity and always have you do the same things: pick up stuff, put it in other stuff. The first items are usually easy to find but then you suddenly find a monster creeping around the corridors which wasn’t there before. When you first encounter these enemies it might be scary but you can usually outrun them or simply hide so it gets pretty old after a few times. The game also features chase scenarios at certain points in the levels. They really get your heart racing at first but you soon find out they can’t catch you and you’re just running with a shaky screen and a monster behind you that can’t kill you if you keep running away from it.
Conclusion
Doorways: The Underworld is an okay horror game but it’s far from perfect. It features repetitive gameplay but might sometimes get a scare out of you when you least expect it. One of its better features is the sound but it lacks the coherency between sound and gameplay, resulting in unnecessary loud music when there isn’t anything happening. The story is pretty simple but it’s kind of interesting and the scattered notes are also pretty fun to find and read.
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