WORLD OF HORROR is a breath of fresh air when it comes to experiencing horrific and terrifying video games. It's a completely different way to experience horror, a way to experience surreal and hair-raising horror without the need for realistic graphics or sound effects. Here's a horror game that gets you scared with words and drawings. A visual novel with role-playing elements that will get you investigating mysteries with sinister undertones. In this WORLD OF HORROR review, we tell you how it's still possible to terrify with just words and vibes.

WORLD OF HORROR Review: What is WORLD OF HORROR?

WORLD OF HORROR is a choose-your-own-adventure-style horror visual novel with role-playing and rogue-lite elements, heavily inspired by 90s adventure games and the horror stories of critically acclaimed Japanese manga artist Junji Ito. It was released on October 20, 2023, on PC through Steam, GOG.com, Microsoft Store, and itch.io, as well as on consoles on October 26, 2023, on PS4 and the Nintendo Switch. The game was published by Ysbryd Games and developed by Pantasz.

In WORLD OF HORROR, players take on the role of a resident of a sleepy seaside town. You notice strange hooded individuals appearing in the woods. Unusual entities and eldritch horror sightings have been reported, and other strange occurrences are happening around town. Old gods are stirring as cults perform rituals to call them into existence. You suspect that there's more to these occurrences than meets the eye, and you decide to investigate.

The looming lighthouse appears to be an important piece in this mystery as if it's a radio tower broadcasting strange stuff throughout the cozy town, emitting eldritch and ancient influence from its top. You feel that to stop the arrival of old gods, you have to reach the top of the lighthouse somehow. The thing is, its entrance is blocked with a couple of padlocks.

In WORLD OF HORROR, players investigate mysteries, short scenarios consisting of a mix of random events and predetermined ones tied to the mysteries. In a normal playthrough of the game, players will have to investigate four mysteries, and upon completion of one, they receive a key to one of the locks. However, the player also fights against time as the arrival of the old god threatens the existence of not just the town, but of the world. This is measured by the DOOM statistic, which naturally increases as events happen, although some event results may also result in increased DOOM. Regardless of your progress across the different mysteries, once DOOM reaches 100, the game ends, with the old god arriving and bending the world to its will.

The gameplay loop of WORLD OF HORROR involves investigating one mystery at a time. The game plays out like an old-school adventure game, with various locations players can explore, and items they can collect that they can either use as weapons, consumables to regain health and stats, or as items they can use to unlock special interactions in some events. The player's health is represented by two stats: STA for stamina and REA for reason, representing the character's physical and mental health. Players also have access to spells and prayers which they can use to fight against ghosts and ghouls, with spells costing players' REA to cast.

Investigating a mystery involves the player exploring relevant locations in the case. Investigations spawn events specific to the location being explored, taken from a pool of events available. These could result in event scenarios with choices for actions, or to combat scenarios. In the first case, events play out and are described through text and drawings, with the player choosing one of the available actions to react. Based on their stats and through a dice roll, the results may vary, which may induce status effects to the character, lower their STA or REA, or give various benefits to the player, like an item or a stat boost. In combat scenarios, players fight against the horrific creatures in the game, either through physical combat or through spells and prayers.

WORLD OF HORROR's combat is a unique take on turn-based combat. Each turn, players choose up to eight actions. Each action consumes a certain amount of TIME, which depends on the player's SPD or speed stat. The higher their speed, the less TIME it takes to do an action. The player always has 200 TIME per turn and can do up to eight actions as long as the total TIME required to do them adds up to less than or equal to 200. This allows players to do multiple things at once, like using gestures to perform ritualistic prayers against ghosts or to use a weapon to attack an enemy.

The game also holds a lot of potential thanks to its compatibility with community-made mods and custom scenarios, adding to the game's already deep pool of events, scenarios, and activities. There is a lot to explore in WORLD OF HORROR and it's a great old-school medium for telling hair-raising stories mixing both Japanese traditional myths with Lovecraftian eldritch horrors.

WORLD OF HORROR Gameplay

WORLD OF HORROR's gameplay loop harkens back to old-school 90s adventure games. Players who have not experienced this kind of game before might experience a bit of a struggle getting used to the heavy text and open-ended approach. Thankfully, the developers are very generous in its tutorial, giving players a hand in understanding the game's mechanics and features. The overall gameplay loop of WORLD OF HORROR is fun and intriguing. There are a lot of scenarios and events to explore, and each scenario also has multiple endings, giving the game a lot of replayability. Once the player has experienced the game's pre-made campaigns, players can also set up their own campaigns with a lot of customizable options.

Granted, WORLD OF HORROR's gameplay isn't for everyone, but for old-school adventure game lovers, this is a great rendition. The game's loop also has the perfect length for short bursts of sessions, and just long enough to make experiencing each campaign feel worthy of your time.

The concluding scenario on the tower, however, falls short of my expectations of how a climactic encounter should look like. Some campaigns have unsatisfying conclusions, making the entire ordeal of going through the multiple mysteries feel wasted on an anticlimactic ending. Thankfully, the quality of the scenarios and of the stories in the game, ranging from the weird to the wildly horrific, make every entire experience worth it, as every mystery has the right amount of intrigue to make them worthy of your time.

WORLD OF HORROR Graphics

WORLD OF HORROR features beautiful retro pixel graphics, using monochromatic colors in 1Bit to heighten the tension and mystery of the game. The graphics can also be rendered in 2BIT mode for additional colors, and the game also offers different color palettes to choose from, a wide array of colors with some more legible than others. The game screen is also simulated as a screen for an old fat CTR monitor, with the ability to zoom the screen in to make the CTR monitor visible or not, adding to the game's old-school vibes and aesthetics. The game's models are also hand-drawn and rendered beautifully. The game has a wide range of different creatures and characters, and there's no single quarter spared for all of their renditions. WORLD OF HORROR is a charming game that looks beautiful in its own regard, with old-school graphics that do the genre right.

WORLD OF HORROR Story

WORLD OF HORROR's range of stories is satisfactory. While the overall story is almost always the same (a select Old God is being summoned by a strange cult, leading to multiple mysteries you have to solve to gain clues on how to stop the ritual), each individual mystery that you get to explore is special and unique. There is also a good range of them with different themes and different levels of eeriness, mixing things up and making sure that the horror doesn't overstay its welcome. Some stories are scarier than others, which should keep players on the edge and on guard. Overall, WORLD OF HORROR tells a lot of unique stories that draw inspiration from a lot of source materials, beautifully blending them together for the game's own version of old wives' tales and urban legends.

WORLD OF HORROR Music and Sound Design

WORLD OF HORROR features an old-school bit tune sound design, with eerie music that captures the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness. The hopelessness suits the game's otherworldly horrors well, as the game's old gods threaten all life on earth, making the player feel small in the face of such a strong supernatural entity. The loneliness, on the other hand, encapsulates the feeling of being on your own in your investigations, as others may not understand your concerns, or may not even believe your stories. The game also features a soundtrack with different songs to play across different kinds of scenarios as well.

Verdict: Is WORLD OF HORROR worth your time and money?

I definitely recommend WORLD OF HORROR, an especially unique experience to play this Halloween season. It's a different kind of fright that sets itself apart from other horror games today. For the low price of $19.99, the game offers hours upon hours of content, with endless potential thanks to its compatibility with custom scenarios. It offers bite-sized scenarios that can be taken one at a time, or completed in a single, epic playthrough. WORLD OF HORROR is a great game to play if you love reading horror stories and have a very good imagination, or if you're a fan of 90s adventure games. You'll get a lot of mileage from WORLD OF HORROR, and its nascent community of modders and scenario writers will make sure that there will always be something new for players to experience in the future.

Score: 9/10

Editor's Note: ClutchPoints received a PC review copy of WORLD OF HORROR to allow us to cover the game. These copies did not, in any way, affect this WORLD OF HORROR review and score.