Boot up the DOS and insert the floppy disk, World of Horror is going to take you on a journey back to a time when colors in videogames were a dream, and the slightest of animations were a feat only at the reach of the best coders. And yet, how memorable many of those text-based adventures were, lingering memories of pixelated imagery and exciting tales. World of Horror achieves that goal, seemingly a basic game but with a lot more hiding beneath the blatant pixels and gruesome stories. This is a chilling and original game with more appeal than it honestly should have, but that still could do with some additional polish.

Choose Your Own Death

World of Horror deliberately shares its concept with those classic “choose your own adventure” books. Each run puts you through a randomized selection of gruesome mysteries that you can solve in any order you wish, the paths are diverse and result in one of multiple outcomes. In a sense, this is a roguelite adventure RPG, one where you face a series of event cards in the hope of reaching the end of the story. And then you do it again, trying to find new events and unlock different endings.

This is more compelling than it sounds, due to the no holds barred nature of the adventure. It takes a page from the school of H.P. Lovecraft and some renowned Japanese authors, with very descriptive situations aided by some great pixel art and the occasional jumpscare. Soon enough, you will restart some mysteries because you want to try other paths and investigate different areas, craving some new and harrowing scenes that may result in better weapons or additional items. This is, after all, an RPG and your character has stats and an inventory.

Some actions and finished mysteries reward you with experience points, and you get to level up your character by selecting a new perk and stat upgrade. These come in handy for some events, since there’s a considerable amount of RNG going on, with success or failure checks that affect the outcome of the situation. But you’re most likely to pay close attention to your stats when you enter one of the many battles against horrific creatures.

The turn-based combat is initially daunting, with the UI being the main culprit. It’s unnecessarily convoluted and for some reason, it feels like it could have been streamlined and more intuitive than it currently is. There are several menus for all types of actions, and while it provides a host of possibilities that will keep you experimenting for several runs, it’s one to learn by trial and error; a tutorial is available, but it’s not going to guide you through all the workings.

When you finally learn your way around the numerous combat buttons, you realize that there are more strategies than the basic time movement bar led you to believe. You can do things such as ordering your companions to distract the enemy, make them attack, throw an item, pray for heals, boost an attack, cast spells, search for an improvised weapon, and more. Each action takes a specific amount of time that may change according to your stats, and after selecting a few moves, you launch the turn. Given the lack of proper hit feedback apart from a brief shake and sound effect, you have to stay attentive to health points to judge how the battle is turning out.

Investigating scenes raises your doom level, since a run is intrinsically tied to a random old god and the effect it brings upon the investigation. Moving from scene to scene increases doom, some negative actions boost it even further – but others may decrease it – and if it reaches 100%, the run is over. Gods may affect the game in ways such as locking areas from access or increasing doom rate, among other twists.

Retro Doom

With around 20 mysteries for now, there’s enough variety to keep you busy until you enter the lighthouse for the main showdown. Hours will fly by until there are no more mysteries to investigate, and it’s all completely worth the asking price.

Mysteries are fairly diverse and don’t hold back on the nasty characters and descriptive narrative, resulting in a palpable sense of discomfort and wariness as you move from one room to the next. The achieved art direction plays a big role in this, simple enough to be evocative but never too disturbing as it could have been with the current tech, showing that even MS Paint can be used to create a successful moody style. The chiptune soundtrack that accompanies the adventures is another triumph, providing just the right mood up to the point where it becomes unnerving, unsettling, bothersome… eventually on purpose.

However, you’ll inevitably reach a point where the scenes start to repeat themselves more often than not. Considering the initial appeal and the pace at which you are likely to devour the mysteries, just like a good “choose your own adventure book,” the pages will become very familiar. Furthermore, most scenes are bound by the RNG effect, with a positive or negative outcome that you don’t really have much control over to begin with, and the other condition to succeed is being in possession of a certain item or perk. With a limited inventory and an extremely tough choice when it comes to picking a perk, gameplay ends up being reduced to a certain luck factor where you just happen to be in possession of this or that, right when you needed it.

Still, it’s worth persevering for a few good hours, if only to see where the twisted mind of the creator is going with each story. There’s some disturbing fun to be had, like a good episode from a V/H/S movie but in retro gaming format and with some graphical imagery that is evocative and often chilling.

World of Horror is a niche game, one that younger players may dismiss as an antiquity lacking substance and ease of play. But older players know that the intent is precisely that – to bring back the feelings from decades ago, where this type of presentation was all the rage, but improving on the choices and possibilities in ways that weren’t possible back then. The twisted mysteries also help, often taking dark turns and not holding back on the gruesome and the morbid. It’s an accomplished horror throwback that mostly hits the mark and may hit your emotions in a couple of different ways as well, disgust comfortably sitting next to a strong nostalgia flavor.

Score: 8/10

Pros:

• Mysteries are twisted and fun to uncover
• Art style is accomplished and gruesome in effective ways
• Enough diversity in scenes to make you want to explore more of it
• Chiptune music is unnervingly stressful and all the best for it

Cons:

• Battle UI is cumbersome and could do with some streamlining
• A certain shade of RNG in scenes may lead to frustration

World of Horror review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.