World of Horror
Panstasz, LLC
2023
PC, Switch, PS4

Dark gods unleash eldritch horrors on Shiokawa, a small Japanese coastal town, and your survivor is one of several young people who feel responsible in some way to stop the horror before it’s too late. There’s Haru, a young criminal who robbed a haunted mansion and now seeks to defeat the evil that killed his accomplices. Kouji’s a young photojournalist who’s trying to stop a government cover-up. My favorite is Mimi, the nursing student (?) whose obsession with the macabre makes her think battling these monsters is a great opportunity to put her “medical skills” to use. Most of these characters have a featured “challenge” run, which amps up their characterization while also amping up their weaknesses – “Mimi’s Little Project” features her experimenting on her own body to try to, uh…well, it’s not always clear, but the results are never wholly good for the player.

World of Horror plays out as an adventure game combined with a turn-based RPG. Upon starting each playthrough, you receive 5 of the game’s 22 mysteries, short adventures you’ll play through in Shiokawa and the surrounding area. You move from location to location, checking out shops or seeking resources, before hitting the explore button. Explore draws a “card” from the event deck – these can be a fight, a skill check, a choice, or sometimes just sheer bad luck. Collecting items, spells, and allies will help you battle the game’s greatest foes or survive the game’s numerous challenges. Combat is a little confusing, with weapons being defined by their lead stat and certain moves being defined by their own, but after some trial and error it becomes simple enough.

Not every mystery ends with a boss – learning the mysteries offered can result in smart play. “Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels,” in which you and your neighbor Kana investigate a third weird neighbor’s apartment, ends up being a major boon to take early, as Kana can become a permanent ally reducing all combat damage by -1. “Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting” can either be one of the game’s most dangerous mysteries, ending with an extremely challenging boss fight, or it can be very safe and earn you one of the game’s best weapons.

The danger of these mysteries pairs perfectly with the horror of the game’s art. Drawn entirely in MS Paint in designs that are legible in 1-bit monochrome (the game also offers two-tone color palettes), World of Horror is full of great 80s fashion and horrible scissor-beasts. It’s among the best works of pixel art I’ve ever seen. There’s very little animation, which is why I can’t nominate it in that category, but when it does appear, it’s striking. The game’s soundtrack has been haunting me since release – when I read Junji Ito’s Uzumaki last year, I put on this game’s soundtrack as my background music.

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite mystery, but “Vicious Verses of a Violent Vigil” is a break in form that’s really successful. The intro reads: “You’ve received an official-looking letter. What does a law firm from Tokyo want from you?… ‘We regret to inform you of the passing of our client and your grand-uncle. His funeral will be preceded by an overnight vigil as per the client’s request.’ There’s an address and a list of people expected to arrive. You don’t recognize any of the names… Intrigued, you decide to check it out, what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Shortly after beginning to explore, you receive a pamphlet containing the rituals of this funeral. Following them serves someone – not following them someone else. Midnight rolls around, and (shock and awe) things get dark!

World of Horror takes the basic structure of Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Horror card game, smartly simplifies its rather archaic structure, and colors the core with aesthetic and narrative inspirations from Junji Ito’s Uzumaki to Sion Sono’s Suicide Club. It is perhaps the definitive J-Horror anthology video game, combining the popular rumor-based ghost stories of early internet BBSes with the bizarre and powerful monster designs of horror mangaka. It’s a remarkable, weird game, one that still has unimplemented storylines waiting for developer Panstasz to return and expand on. My understanding is that he now works at a dentist’s office, occasionally plugging away at this game privately, updating us when he has something new to share. If he never does, hopefully someone else can take the lessons of this game and make something just as strange and tense.