Indie Game Review: World Of Horror
World Of Horror is a love letter to Junji Ito and Lovecraft enthusiasts everywhere. Just its visuals are enough to grab one’s attention, but its wildly branching roguelike storytelling will keep them coming back for more. The first thing that caught my attention coming into World of Horror was the aesthetics. It’s wild what restricting a game to a two color palette can due to the atmosphere.
There are over a dozen different color swap options for the game that makes every single play-through feel a bit fresher. You’ll find yourself flipping through them a bunch just to see how it changes the overall mood of the game as you play. I’ve found a couple favorites that I tend to switch between every time that I go through a custom playthrough.
When you start out, the game is very user friendly and has several options to choose from, based on how you want to learn the game. You can either do what is essentially a tutorial run, or dive in blind and select quick play. There is also a custom play-through option that makes your run a bit more tailored to the play-style you find most comfortable. That said, I have found myself hitting quickplay a bit more than usual because it seems the game’s internal RNG sets the game better up than I ever could.
There are a couple characters you can play as that have different stats or items. You can also choose a difficulty or a background depending on what you’ve unlocked while you’ve been playing. What is even more incredible is that there are a ton of things to unlock that will continue to change how the game is played for every individual person.
In my introduction, I mentioned the game is a bit similar to a roguelike, but that might be a bit unfair to the game itself. It isn’t nearly as frustrating as most roguelikes and it is much kinder to the player when things become dire. I have died quite a few times, but it’s usually due to my own mistakes. I never felt like the game was being unfair. I’ve played enough roguelikes to know when it feels far more like a hiccup in the game’s polish than a user made error.
World Of Horror is a pre-release beta, but despite that it feels incredibly well polished. The music provided is all atmospheric chip-tune that goes along well with the accompanying spooky visuals. It also seems like the developer has every intention on adding even more features down the road. Only recently there was a hot-fix for a couple of features and it appears the next update may include the ability to make your own story events that will be shared with others.
I’m incredibly excited to see what else the game has to offer. It is set at an incredibly affordable 14.99 price range on Steam and well worth the full price purchase. Honestly, if you’re at all a fan of this genre it is a game you should probably have in your steam library. World Of Horror is a game that Ysbryd Games should be proud to publish. Panstatz is an marvellous developer and I can’t wait to see more from them.
Dev & Game’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/panstasz
Game’s Website: http://www.wohgame.com/
