Saint Kotar Review: Trudging Through the Fog

I’ve always held a certain amount of respect for the point-and-click genre. It was once a massively popular genre, and throughout its reign, has spawned such classic series as King’s Quest and Clock Tower. Of course, a lot of that was due to technical limitations—it was easier to create story-centric games that way simply due to how they work. Obviously, that’s not the case anymore. Still, despite its quickly waning popularity, it never quite gave up, which is something that I’m happy about. The genre may not be my all-time favorite, but I still enjoy a good point and click adventure from time to time, especially if centers around horror. And that brings us to the subject of today’s review Saint Kotar.

A game inspired by classic horror pieces like The King in Yellow, Saint Kotar is an atmospheric horror point-and-click adventure, and a good one at that! In fact, it’s almost a great one. It does a lot of things right, and many of said things are integral to the success of any point and click worth its salt. Unfortunately, it falters just enough on a few key areas to keep it from firmly planting its ethereal feet in the “great” territory.

The Blood of The Covenant…

Boy, if this isn’t ever the calm before the storm.

Taking place in the concerningly ever-gloomy town of Sveti Kotar, Croatia, Saint Kotar follows the story of Benedek—a monk with an unwavering devotion to God—and Nikolay—a once equally devoted man who finds his faith in The Almighty quickly waning. The two had originally traveled to the less-than-cheery town alongside Victoria—a woman who happens to be both Benedik’s sister (although they’re not on the best of terms) and Nikolay’s wife. However, when Benedik and Nikolay suddenly find themselves waking up in a house without knowing how they got there and without knowing Victoria’s whereabouts, they’ll begin what will be the most perilous journey of their lives.

When it comes to story-based games, especially point-and-click adventures, atmosphere is important. And, to Saint Kotar’s credit, it does an incredible job at creating an uncomfortable and oppressive atmosphere—thanks to its combination of visuals that feel simultaneously modern-yet-retro, as well as a stellar cast of voice actors—and carries this feeling from start to finish. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to do much with said atmosphere. The game is incredibly tense at almost any given moment, and you can’t help but feel as though something bad is always going to happen. And, to the game’s credit, bad things do happen in this game. But I can’t help but feel as though the, I don’t know, “magnitude” of said “bad-ness” doesn’t quite match up with the overall atmosphere of the game? Saint Kotar increasingly teases players with demonic hallucinations and prophecies of catastrophe, and it honestly really got my hopes up for a spectacularly horrifying grand finale. But what I got at the end, however… well, let’s just say it wasn’t that.

Oh, hey, I get that reference!

Saint Kotar also seems to liken itself quite a bit to Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow—a horror novel which, without giving away anything, is basically a collection of stories about the eponymously titled literature (although it’s a play for some reason in the book?) showing up in people’s lives and bringing misfortune to any who dare read it. In reality, however, the links between Saint Kotar and The King in Yellow, while indeed there, aren’t but skin deep and are all very overt. Rather than cleverly sewing in references, we have things like “book that makes you crazy” and “entity literally named King in Yellow.” To be fair, there are a few other parallels that aren’t quite this obvious, however, given that the source material’s been out for roughly 128 years, I feel like references could have been made a little more cleverly.

Footprints in the Sand

I mean… I found something, yeah.

When it comes to Saint Kotar’s gameplay there really isn’t much to say that can’t be summed up with the statement “it’s what you’d expect from your basic, 3D, point-and-click adventure.” Mechanically speaking, anyway. And that’s not bad, in this case. While some genres constantly diversify themselves (and essentially need to), there’s really only so much you can do with a more niche genre like this until it becomes something else entirely. And that’s just fine. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the genre—you explore your surroundings, talk to people, collect items (some of which you’ll ultimately use for weird purposes, of course), and slowly piece together the mysteries surrounding you. And that’s perfectly okay!

Despite the somewhat rigid lines holding the point-and-click genre in place, there are a few things that you can do to spice your games up. The first is to follow good ‘ol Sierra Games and put in a bajillion ways to make the game unwinnable. Saint Kotar didn’t do that, fortunately. Another way is to add in optional content/subquests into the game, which Saint Kotar did do! While not, of course, necessary, there are a number of optional subquests which, if completed, serve to greatly help enhance the player’s understanding of just exactly what is going on around them (and, trust me, there’s plenty going on). Given how much lore is packed into the game, it’s a nice way of letting players experience all of the story without absolutely forcing everything down people’s throats if they’re really not interested (which I’m not really sure why you wouldn’t be if you’re playing a game like this, but whatever floats your boat.)

Who can you even trust in a place like Sveti Kotar?

It’s also worth noting that Saint Kotar allows players to control multiple characters—specifically Benedek and Nikolay—throughout the game, and at times even lets players freely swap between them. Personally, I think that this is a really good idea for a game like this. The use of multiple characters means that developers can get really creative with puzzle-solving and can even provide different perspectives for the same scenarios. However, while we did get a few perspective shifts, Saint Kotar ultimately didn’t do too much when it came to tapping into the potential creative power that employing multiple player characters could bring about. In fact, most of the time, the game is just a single-character experience. Despite the game setting things up like you’ll be controlling both Benedek and Nikolay for most, if not all, of the game, it’s largely just one or the other. I would have loved being given the option to deal with certain problems in different ways depending upon the character I was playing as, especially given the ever-growing religious divide between the two which steadily progressed as the game continued onward.

Grasping at Greatness

There’s something great in Saint Kotar, but I can’t exactly tell you what. It feels like a great game is, well, kind of stuck inside of a “just okay” game at the present. The atmosphere, premise, and voice acting are stellar, but are ultimately brought down by pacing that doesn’t quite feel all too thought out. I spent the entire game feeling like I was working toward something special—only to still feel like I was “working my way up” by the time I got to the end. There was never really any true “closure” in Saint Kotar. And, while the game was good in many aspects, I think that that was what let me down the most. Ah, well, it’s still probably worth a play if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Final Verdict: 3/5

Available on: PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, PC ; Publisher: SOEDESCO Publishing ; Developer: Red Martyr Entertainment ; Players: 1  ; Released: November 11, 2022 ; ESRB: M for Mature ; MSRP: $34.99

Full disclosure: A Saint Kotar code was provided to Hey Poor Player by the publisher.