Ural 'Orrible Deaths: First-Person Spooker Kholat

The Dyatlov Pass incident is one of those strange and horrible tragedies you'd read in a book filled with tales of spontaneous human combustion, the Mary Celeste, ball lightning, Roanoke Colony, the Lead Masks Case, star jelly, and other mysteries that the author's not saying aliens did, right, but aliens probably did it. Nine hikers died in Russia's Ural mountains in 1959 after cutting their tent open from the inside and scattering barefoot into the snow. Their corpses were found weeks and months later, some with strange wounds. And first-person horror Kholat is inspired by that tale. Kholat's not saying ghosts did it, but a beautiful new trailer shows ghosts probably did it.

It's delving into passes, peaks, and caverns of the Urals to investigate those deaths, and encountering spoOoOoky things along the way. I think it a little odd to turn real-life deaths supernatural, as this seems to, but gawd knows video games do far worse every single day. Maybe these shades are hypothermic hallucinations, and the real horror is our own frailty.

Supposedly players will need to navigate using a map and compass, which sounds splendid. There's talk of a "fear manager" managing tension too, which I assume means procedural spooky events.

Kholat is due some time between January and March next year, and is currently trying to survive on Steam Greenlight. Here, look at these beautiful and horrible icy mountains: