A little while back I started seeing some hype growing for this new video game IP, World of Horror. Besides the straight-to-the-point title, it immediately caught my attention with its super retro look.
Old school graphics depicting horrific manga type monsters? I needed to know more.
Put together by one man Polish game studio Panstasz, World of Horror is a love letter to the old point and click adventure videogames of the eighties. As well as the works of legendary horror icons H.P. Lovecraft and Junji Ito.
THE STORY
In a small seaside Japanese town, a ritual has begun to summon the ‘Old Gods’. This is causing all kinds of eldritch happenings among the rural residents. You play as an investigator, looking into the mysteries of the town in an attempt to halt the coming of these horrors.
There’s you’re Lovecraft right there.
In your apartment, which acts as your hub, you can choose from four different mysteries to unravel.
World of Horror plays out differently every time, with the mysteries shuffling at the start of each campaign; and every one of them is delightfully spooky.
Whether it be fisherman mysteriously disappearing at sea, entire groups of people falling into everlasting comas or a janitor with an obsession with mermaids, kidnapping students and transforming them into his favourite mythical creature.
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You can get multiple endings depending on your choices during each investigation. But these choices sometimes feel a bit aimless and disjointed from the actual story.
The cases pulled me in with macabre intrigue, but unfortunately, the game’s rogue-like style took me right out of it.
Basically, each mystery consists of a number of ‘steps’ along the narrative. Each step will have you investigating a different point around town, but when you do this a random ‘event’ occurs.
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These events often have little to do with the mystery you’re pursuing. For example, almost every time I was in the school, even on different mysteries, I was harassed by a creepy substitute teacher who wanted help moving some things into her office.
This made it difficult to get immersed in the juicy nightmares that were being disclosed.
THE LOOK
Panstasz founder Pawel Kozminski, has meticulously sketched every frame and animation in Microsoft Paint. All in a nostalgic 1-bit style.
The disturbing images are straight out of a Junji Ito horror manga. The likes of a woman with a ribcage for a face, school girls wearing creepy masks and corpses rotting in bathtubs.
The standard setting is black and white, but you can choose from a variety of hues to suit your fancy.
While this approach is visually appealing and impressive, the actual game screen can get overcrowded really quickly, with all matter of buttons and commands to choose from.
For my next point, I need to highlight what a tease the launch trailer for World of Horror is:
The fluid anime-style animation had me hooked to the point that I was sending the trailer around to all my friends, saying how cool this game looked.
I knew that it would be a point and click game when playing, but I kind of expected there to be some cool animated sequences between gameplay.
The closest I could find was when I had to puncture a colleague’s eye to expel some pesky eels that had gotten in there, as you can see below: (Caution the video is quite graphic)
But there really wasn’t enough of this. Despite what was shown in its marketing materials, those animations aren’t even in the game.
THE GAMEPLAY
It took me a good four hours of playing to really figure out World of Horror.
The game doesn’t hold your hand, which is fine. But I would’ve appreciated a little bit of guidance to get going.
At the main menu, you are recommended to play the very first prompt ‘SPINE-CHILLING STORY OF SCHOOL SCISSORS’. But it throws you straight into an investigation, with no play tips until you get to some combat.
I had no idea what was going on and got my butt handed to me over and over until I eventually rage quit.
I decided to try another option in the menu. It turns out the second selection has the tutorial (and I use that term lightly).
Why direct players towards the other scenario, then???
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Anyway, once I got my head around the gameplay system, I found things a little more streamlined.
As I mentioned before, the HUD is littered with all these actions and buttons, but most of them feel pretty irrelevant.
In some of the events that you encounter, you will be forced to enter a turn-based battle against one of the game’s many baddies. What could have been a simple, classic RPG style back and forth at first seems convoluted.
Just take a look at all these buttons on the fight screen below! And that’s just one page, there is three extra pages of these!
I eventually found my groove, using the same moves over and over because it was the only way I seemed to make any impact. A steady dose of prep, attack and dodge.
There is three ways you can fail in the game. Stamina acts as your HP. If it drops to zero, you’re dead.
You also have Reason points, which basically measure the strength of your mind. Hit zero and you go mad.
Then there’s the Doom clock, where a percentage is gained each time you perform an action. So, there’s no messing around. You can typically get through a playthrough in an hour or two and are encouraged to replay to find all the different events and scenarios.
I played World of Horror on Nintendo Switch, and let me tell you the console is not built for point and click software of this nature.
The mouse moves at an agonisingly lethargic speed. This was super frustrating; all I wanted to do was smash through the random events to keep the eerie mysteries flowing.
There is an option to use a snap tool with the directional buttons, but I found it never snapped to the command that I wanted and it was just faster to use the free move mouse at a turtle’s pace – which says a lot.
THE SOUND
As you would expect from a 1-bit game, World of Horror’s soundtrack delivers a nostalgic hit to the eardrums. From the opening credits, the unnervingly distorted sound effect put me right in the mood.
Each mystery is coupled with some excellent music. It’s really cool… For a while.
The tracks don’t go for long enough, and loop too often, becoming quite repetitive. It starts to grate when you’re stuck on a particular investigation for a while.
THE VERDICT
I think what Panstasz has attempted here is admirable.
It’s all there. The idea is great. But things become a bit confusing and increasingly frustrating. This is all built on the back of a one-man team, which in itself is incredible. Saying that, a bit more polish and refined playability may have saved the Switch version of World of Horror from this ultimate downfall.
Quest Daily scores World Of Horror:
5.5/10
Quest Daily was supplied a copy of World of Horror by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
