We have seen an influx of indie horror titles that have hit the market over recent years. All of these games have a different style and different inspirations. However, the soon to be released on steam World of Horror stands out to me among those games. Developed by Panstasz, World of Horror is in the style of classic PC Engine RPGs heavily inspired by works of Lovecraft and Junji Ito. It takes the player into a descent into madness they try to save your town and themselves from otherworldly horror. Does World of Horror live up to its name or it just a jumpscare? Let’s adventure in and find out!
Upon booting up World of Horror, you’re greeted with boot-up sounds found on older computer games and a background track that sets the tone for the rest of the game. The player chooses one of 4 game modes (three preset difficulties level and one that allows players to customize various aspects of the game) and attempts to solve the horror-themed mysteries that plague their town. The player starts off in their apartment, which is their base of operations that allows them to choose which mystery to investigate. Once they choose a mystery, they are brought out to the world map that acts as a central hub for the investigation. Players go from place to place attempting to uncover the mystery all while managing sanity and stamina attributes. If either gets too low, the player will die or have the chance to go mad.
It really sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well not so fast, because each time an area is investigated a random event will play out. Some events help the player while some negatively affect them. Depending on the choices made, the game will make ‘rolls’ to see if the player either pass or fail the event. From time to time, the player will be thrown into a battle with some creature, human or otherwise; these battles really put it into perspective how helpless the player truly is in the situations. There are weapons to better defend oneself, but by the time one is found it may already be too late. Every time a mystery is solved, the elder god in the current playthrough brings on a new curse that acts as a penalty to the player, making the rest of the playthrough even harder. This game is pretty high on the difficulty scale but it always kept me going “Oh I know how I can beat that,” or “I now know a better way to manage my stamina.”
The PC Engine environment that World of Horror brings to the table is a nice addition in a genre full of retro horror side scrollers. World of Horror even has customizable visuals that allow the game to be played with different varying overlays that add different types of monitor effects to truly replicate older PC gaming. This title has been in early access and has been constantly getting updated with a new gameplay mode recently added. There were multiple times in various playthroughs where I experienced multiple sound glitches and the game just full-on crashing. I wouldn’t be as mad if it crashed right in the beginning but I was just about to complete my last mystery so it soured my mood a little bit. I hope upon release that this will be taken care of.
While playing World of Horror, I kept on saying to myself that this feels like it would be perfect for a board game and I hope that it does become one. While it’s about to be released on Steam, I do hope that we do see this ported over to other platforms, specifically mobile platforms because I would like to play World of Horror on the go. Overall, World of Horror has the potential to be a hidden gem in an ocean full of horror games. While not without its faults, World of Horror is a fun game with tons of replayability that is sure to keep any horror game fan entertained for a while.
