Been playing Kholat and -- it's a bit of a slog. It's a walking simulator mystery/story game where you're piecing together the story of some dead students in the ass-end of Russian nowhere and the game is largely played by you trudging along through the howling wind and snow and finding journals, letters and other clues. Obviously it wouldn't be much of a story if the answer was "forgot to bring a can opener" so there's some supernatural bugaboos haunting the place who aren't thrilled about you being there. It's open map so there's a fair bit of wandering around trying to find your next clue.
Atmospherically, it's great. Feels cold, isolated and miserable. Spooky stuff feels spooky. Playing it is... slow. Both the pacing of the game and your actual movement rate as you plod through the snow. You can sprint, but only for a few seconds before becoming exhausted. Since the map is open, you can spend a good time crunching your way through the mountain looking for something of note. Worse, the three-second sprint is your only defense against the monster(s) so, if you're caught unaware, it can easily be another 5-10 minutes of trudging back to where you were from your last save point.
The game was on my radar because I'm a sucker for Soviet Bleak: Stalker, Metro, hell I even played through Cryostasis. Kholat has some good moments so far but they're separated by a lot of downtime and it doesn't take too long before the novelty of wandering through snow wears off and you start feeling like you could be playing something more rewarding. Maybe it'd be worth playing out of a bundle but I'd have a real hard time recommending that anyone spend money on it directly.
