Mount Hill Demo

As it is so often said on the subject, a good horror game does not rely on gore and jump scares to become ingrained in the public’s memory. Instead, a pressing atmosphere and a compelling story are required to really scare the players, and a few terrifying villains are preferable as well. Thus, it’s far easier to leave a mark on people by not forcing them to shoot their way out of hundreds of monster encounters.

Mount Hill is a first-person survival game with horror elements, in which your main goal is to solve puzzles and help your character escape from a nasty place. However, you are supposed to survive by simply avoiding enemy contact, which is much harder to achieve and a lot scarier. Not being able to put up a fight feels much more realistic, at least if the monsters that are out to get you inspire fear as well.

The story revolves around a city called Mount Hill, which was affected by radiation after an accident at a nearby nuclear test site. People have started giving birth to all sorts of mutants after the accident, which is why the military comes in and tries to wipe the city from the map. Some mutants survived, and other people fled the area in order to take shelter in the nearby hills.

Since you don’t have the weapons to fight the mutants that lurk the area, your job is to keep making progress by solving the puzzles blocking your way. Enemies are never too far away, on the other hand, so it’s important to stay quiet and avoid their gaze. If push comes to shove, however, there’s always the possibility to make a run for it, because the mutants are not particularly bright and won’t be able to chase you for too long.

The actual puzzles usually require you to fetch items in order to make certain objects work, which is a bit anticlimactic. Thus, the challenge is to retrieve the items without being spotted or killed in the process. The mutants are pretty scary if you happen to run into them, but the rather poor graphics can make them appear pretty silly sometimes.

Even if the demo at hand is a bit too short and to the point, Mount Hill certainly has potential, especially if more diverse puzzles and environments make it into the full game. Hence, it may not be as terrifying as Amnesia or similar games, but it’s pretty scary in its own way.