Video Preview: Doorways

I’ve spent the last two days playing Doorways, an episodic horror title on Steam. Featuring no combat, puzzle solving, and a story about pursuing psychopaths through a dream-like world, Doorways is an interesting title that’s solid in its foundation, but somewhat lacking in level design and scares.

Being an episodic title, each chapter will release sometime after the others. This method of release seems perfect for the game as there is a lot of potential in what I played and there’s still time for the developers to take feedback into consideration. The first chapter of Doorways did not paint a pretty picture of the game. I found it to be uneventful, limited in its ability to scare, and confusing to navigate. Chapter 2 performed much better than the first, producing a more interesting environment with decent puzzles (albeit one puzzle needing an extra checkpoint), fun scare moments, and better level design.

Doorways is a slow-paced title that puts its sharply written dialogue and puzzles before the rest of its elements. Environments can be considered bland to some, and the scares need to be amped up, but the overall experience was fairly decent. With feedback from the first two chapters of the game, it’s my hope that the developers will step it up. I look forward to seeing what Saibot Studios will do with the following remaining chapters.