I first became familiar with Junji Ito’s work while browsing the web late at night–which turned out to be a big mistake. When I found out that there was a game being made using Ito’s work as inspiration, I was excited to see what was in store. After finding out it was all being done as a text-based throwback, I was even more excited to see the finished product.
World of Horror is a point and click horror adventure game that is heavily inspired by Junji Ito, while also containing Lovecraftian monsters and other horror inspirations. Ito’s art style is definitely the most prevalent, and the different cases you solve could come straight from Ito’s manga. Okay, not quite–since Ito tends to be a bit more creative. However, the creep factor is till there, and is somehow enhanced by the low-fidelity presentation.
In World of Horror you play as one of 14 playable characters, just trying to make their way through the increasingly terrifying world. Your goal is, ultimately, to stop whatever ancient evil you’re currently up against. It will be an uphill battle, however. But you can recruit some help along the way–and they make great sacrifices to horrors you may not want your character to interact with directly.
There are all types of horrifying things to run into in World of Horror. Some of these events will resolve on their own. Others will require you to make choices–with these choices potentially lowering your health (stamina) or increasing your curse level, etc. There are combat events that have your character directly battling with unspeakable terrors. These combat encounters are turn-based, and allow you to cue up a certain number of actions or attacks before executing them–and hoping you can kill them before they kill you.
While World of Horror says it’s an homage to pre-VGA mostly text-based adventures. I used to play games like that when I was a kid (yeah, I’m old as hell) but I don’t remember them being so busy, visually. The tutorial even makes mention of that. That means World of Horror is a hard game to wrap your head around–especially if you’ve played nothing but games with HD graphics your entire life. This isn’t to knock on World of Horror’s art style. In fact, I would love to see more games take more chances in their mechanics and presentation. World of Horror requires a bit of a learning curve.
World of Horror does a great job in its homage to classic old school adventure games. There are a few different ways you can experience this: through 1-bit or 2-bit mode, which changes the visuals overall. There are also a few color filter options that let you experience World of Horror in the most comfortable way–or just how you prefer it.
I can’t say I’ve ever played a game quite like World of Horror. It has a mixture of genuinely unsettling moments mixed in with exquisitely executed jump scares. It feels more like a board game than an old school adventure game, but that’s okay–it’s still very fun to play. It’s also very difficult, so be prepared to die a few times before you figure out what’s going on, or at least go in at a lower difficult to get a hang of its unwieldy UI.
World of Horror is available now on Steam
A Steam key was provided to us for this review.
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