Recently I’ve been getting back into the Cthulhu mythos with various games. There was Call of Cthulhu for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics for the PC, Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones also on PC and now World of Horror which set to release on PC and Nintendo Switch this year. At their booth at PAX South 2020, Ysbryd brought Wold of Horror once again and had two scenarios to playthrough. One was going through a school and the other was visiting a relative’s wake. I went with the wake playthrough.
Now what makes World of Horror stand out from most games using the Cthulhu mythos is that the setting is in a small Japanese town and has heavy influences from Japanese folk lore and 80’s pop culture. In the words of the reps at the booth “Think Junji Ito meets HP Lovecraft”.
The first thing you’ll noticed right away is the art style: it is a retro looking black and white 1-bit style. Even though it may look retro, the artwork is actually pretty detailed. Gameplay is your typical point n’ click style of games, which honestly I’m not really too big of a fan of, mostly due to not having a computer till I was in middle school, so I missed out on most of the beloved point n’ click games on the PC at the time. What had me interested in World of Horror was its 80’s Japanese vibe and of course Cthulhu. Also it turns out that the game does have RPG elements and is not just a pure point n’ click.
As for the scenario that I played at PAX South, I was invited to the wake of a relative that you kind of, sort of knew. Not to spoil anything, but when you arrive things start to get strange. As you investigate the manor where the wake is taking place, things are not what they seem. That’s all I’ll say as I feel that the story is something that needs to be experience. Which you can really soon as Ysbryd announced that the game will heading to Early Access this month on the 20th.
