Overview
Well, where to begin? Doorways: Chapters 1 & 2 (now called Doorways: Prelude, apparently) is an exploration, puzzle solving horror game, that relies on darkness to confound you, while playing as a character who is after people in some alternate dimension.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much well.
It’s yet another horror title in what is seemingly becoming a bigger and bigger genre.
Pros
- Graphics are decent
- Voice acting is surprisingly good for a low budget indie horror game
- Imagery is astounding, from the torture dungeon to the malformed humans
- It’s over quick and has easy achievements if you’re an achievement hunter
Cons
- Far, far too dark; darkness is excellent in a horror game, this one just uses it excessively
- Puzzles are extremely easy, made harder by the near pitch blackness (I rarely turn my monitor brightness up; this game had me increasing it both from within game and the actual monitor controls)
- Not much to the environments, they’re all pretty basic
- Inventory system is clunky
- Chapter 1’s torch is the most useless torch in the history of gaming, whether by design or anot
Summary
Doorways: Prelude has a few things going for it, with some genuinely disturbing imagery at parts, but it’s overall another sub-par horror game, that relies on complete blackness to make its easy puzzles harder. I completed it in roughly 80 minutes, with the remainder of my time played allowing the game to run to get the final two card drops.
I picked this up in a bundle at some point along the way, and for the price, it was well worth it. I wouldn’t suggest buying this on its own, unless you’re very hard up for a horror game. But if you’re hard up for a horror game, there are, literally, hundreds of other titles far more deserving of your cash.
(This review was first written on January 24th, 2016, on the Steam store page for Doorways)