World of Horror: A Spine-Tingling Dread Experience That Honors Its Inspirations

I find myself completely covered in spider’s silk, with only my eyeballs visible as I await my impending fate. The city of Shiokawa, Japan, has fallen victim to the insatiable arachnid Old God, and now we are all trapped in its web. Despite solving all the mysteries on my bulletin board, I couldn’t escape the doom that awaited me.

“World of Horror” can be summed up in one word: dread. This point-and-click cosmic horror game, created by Polish developer Pawel Kozminski (Panstasz), was released by Ysbryd Games after years in early access. The game is text-heavy and plays like a choose-your-own-adventure story, with most choices leading to gruesome death or irreversible insanity.

Players must unravel five mysteries plaguing Shiokawa, gathering information and battling monstrous entities along the way. Each encounter is unsettling, from a boil-covered former teacher to a woman with broken ribs jutting from her face. As the Doom meter ticks away, players must keep the Old God at bay until they can unlock the lighthouse and banish it.

The horror-manga-style RPG draws inspiration from Junji Ito and HP Lovecraft, creating a sense of unease that lingers even when nothing is happening. The visuals, reminiscent of 1- or 2-bit graphics created in MS Paint, enhance the disturbing atmosphere of the game.

With various difficulty levels and customization options, players can tailor their experience to their preferences. The turn-based combat adds an engaging element, with the need to strategize and adapt to different foes. Despite the challenging nature of the game, the short playthroughs make each death a new opportunity to try again.

World of Horror: A Detailed Horror Experience

Where World of Horror truly excels is in its attention to horrifying detail. A TV playing in your home runs grisly newscasts nonstop, including one about a dentist who replaced his human patients’ teeth with dogs’ teeth. (Remember, the developer is also a dentist). Look through the peephole of your apartment door and you might see a shadow man down the hall, or the quickly retreating face of someone lurking around the corner, or just an empty corridor. Twisted ghouls wait behind dead-end classroom doors.

Unpredictable and Ghastly Endings

Things are rarely the same when you come back to them. Each mystery has multiple endings and multiple ways to get you there, so you can’t quite predict what’s going to happen next even if you just played 10 runs in a row. Some stories are more involved than others, better thought through. But each has at least one ghastly element that justifies its place among the rest. If World of Horror is anything, it’s effective, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.