I was introduced to the work of Junji Ito quite some time ago with “The Enigma of Amigara Fault.” That particular story haunted me for a while before I finally dove into his work proper, and I’m still waiting to see if there’s a bottom to it. He often tells stories that start with grounded simplicity before quickly dropping them into a vat of inexplicable and undefined horror. He does a great job of starting off with a world that is uncomfortably off before pushing it to incomprehensible extremes. It’s not an uncommon approach to horror, but it’s one that his personal flourish aids so well.
I explain this because World of Horror is impossible to untangle from its inspiration. It feels very much like if Junji Ito had designed a monochromatic NEC PC-88 adventure title. The art style and storytelling both take cues from Ito-san’s works. And that’s a good starting point, sure, but the important part is what’s done with it.
World of Horror has been in Early Access since 2020. I knew from the beginning that it was something that interested me, but I held off on trying it. I wanted to review it, so the moment I was given access to its 1.0 candidate, I dove in. It has been living in my brain ever since.
World of Horror (PC [Reviewed], Switch, PS4, PS5)
Developer: Panstasz
Publisher: Ysbryd Games, Playism
Released: October 19, 2023
MSRP: $19.99
You could say that World of Horror is a cross between a roguelite and a classic adventure title and not be far off. You choose a character (or have the game choose one for you), select from a few modifiers, and then are dropped into a world on the precipice of destruction. The town of Shiokawa (salt river?) has been seeing some unexplainable phenomenon, and you’re dished five (sometimes four) mysteries to try and solve. Completing each mystery nets you a key to a lock on the lighthouse looming over town. You need to get through that door, climb to the top, and stop whatever eldritch god is standing on the threshold of reality.
Solving a mystery is as simple as exploring specific locations. And when I say “exploring,” I mean you just click on it and then press the explore button. This leads your character to automatically take a look around, at which point you’ll be presented with an encounter. These are sometimes straight combat, but more often, they present you with a situation, and you select an option to try and deal with it.
You have what amounts to three separate health bars: stamina, reason, and doom. Every encounter carries the possibility of moving one of these stats, and your job is to try and resolve them while limiting the negative effects they might have. Sometimes, you need a good weapon to take down a threat as quickly as possible. Other times, you simply need to make the right choice. Occasionally, you need a specific party member or item to avoid an unfavorable outcome, while there are also times when it’s a dice roll paired with a specific character stat.
That’s exactly where a lot of people are going to check out. Many of the central mechanics of World of Horror come down to luck. Much of the control you’re given is merely used to prepare, brace for, and mitigate bad luck. If you’re someone who fears the random number generator, then World of Horror will drive you mad.
For everyone else, it’s put to good use. Generally speaking, your character is on a constant decline. Each mystery is going to take more and more from them, and it’s inevitable that they’ll die from it. The game then becomes something of a race against time to solve Shiokawa’s problems before death arrives to take them. You’re tangibly clinging to hope as things get worse and worse around you, and your protagonist gradually falls apart.
This can lead to runs where you get screwed pretty early. Maybe you accrue a tonne of doom in the early stages, are shackled to a permanent injury, or just can’t manage to power your character up. That can suck since each run can go for over an hour. However, it’s worth noting that I once had a protagonist who raced against doom for two mysteries and eventually stopped the apocalypse at 99% doom on the clock. Hope springs eternal.
As for the mysteries themselves, they’re varied and interesting. Many of them follow the same formula of exploring the locations within Shiokawa to advance the story, but others take you to different locations or lock you in your apartment. The best ones have you try and complete a series of actions within a set time limit, which gives you some agency over the outcome. A lot of the fun comes from trying to discover all the possible endings.
On the other hand, the stories have limited replay value after you discover the endings. Thankfully, there are quite a few of them to go through (22, by my count), which lasts quite a while. At the beginning of each run, you can reroll the mysteries you’re given, so if there’s one you just have no interest in repeating, you’re able to just roll it away.
The general narratives of these stories aren’t often very deep, but they usually hit the right notes to make a decent mystery. The encounters sometimes tie in well to what’s going on in the story, and other times, they tend to conflict. Typically, when an encounter didn’t make sense to a wider narrative, my brain just isolated and discarded it. However, if you’re hoping for smooth, well-told stories, World of Horror tends to get in the way of itself.
As for whether or not World of Horror is actually scary, I’m not sure if I can answer that. I guess it depends on how effective you consider body and existential horror. The game largely leans on the sort of topics that Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft favored, so you can expect cults, voyeurs, and incomprehensible horror. As an adventure title, there are no real jump scares, but sometimes, during screen transitions, you can see strange symbols left on your screen, which is a really nice touch.
The aesthetic, in general, is well executed. The developers bill its look as being 1-bit (i.e., monochrome), and all the art is done in MS Paint. I’m not sure that was a necessary limitation, and sounds time-consuming, but it still generally looks nice. You can swap between various palettes, but I never really found one I preferred over the white/black or the purple and blue CGA style. However, what I do love is that, by default, the game presents itself on a screen in a dark room with a window off to the side. It adds a nice feeling of playing it in a pitch-dark room late at night, which is funny because was usually playing in a pitch-dark room late at night.
The music does a lot to fit the mysteries. Each narrative has its own theme, and the music adapts to fit what’s going on. It might play faster during a panic-inducing scene or slow down to allow for some suspense. It’s well executed, but it might burrow into your ear. Just a warning.
I feel like World of Horror is a game for a specific group of people that I happen to fall into. I can see a lot of ways, both large and small, where it might not click for people. You have to sort of have a love of Junji Ito’s brand of horror, an affection for classic adventures, and a tolerance for randomized encounters. If you’ve got a check in each of those boxes, then you’ll likely find a lot to love here.
World of Horror seems to hit all its goals. While its approach to horror is rather derivative of Junji Ito, it’s applied in a creative way and with a vision of its own. I can’t say I was blown away because it really is exactly the game that it claims to be. However, I was immensely satisfied. It’s a wonderfully modular experience, but if you’re deathly afraid of numbers, then that’s where you’ll find the real horror.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]
