The Ysbryd booth at PAX South this year featured two games: YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, and World of Horror. Obviously I didn’t need to see the YIIK demo, since I was playing through my review copy at the time, but World of Horror looked like nothing else on the show floor.
“How scary can a black and white game be, especially one with an old-school point and click style UI?” The PR rep just smiled at my question and asked me to make sure the volume on my headset was okay. Maybe I should have remembered how many old episodes of The Twilight Zone can still give me the creeping heeby-jeebies.
World of Horror doesn’t look frightening. However, as I found out during my playthrough, the grainy, stylized graphics have a way of pulling the player into the story. Even on the loud and crowded show floor, where noise-cancelling headsets are overwhelmed, I found myself intently focused on navigating my character through the halls of her high-school as she sought to acquire the means of stopping a scissor-wielding demon before it was too late.
The game takes place in a world where the Old Gods are reawakening and slowly making their way back into our reality. In a small, seaside town in Japan, a population’s sanity is inversely proportional to the grotesque creatures arriving to terrorize the townsfolk. Players explore branching stories with five playable characters, each with their own story and perspectives on the events that are unfolding. In the tradition of visual novels, each story can have multiple endings – some good, some less so.
As I navigated my character through her search for items and help, I was aware that the clock was ticking, and a showdown was inevitable. I had to make sure I was prepared enough. Searching an empty classroom might turn up a piece of blessed chalk to help with a summoning circle, but sliding open the classroom door might also reveal a hideous eyeball attached to an otherworldly body which sent my character’s sanity plunging and caused me to jump in my chair.
I’m not sure trusting this substitute is a good plan.
Eventually I ran out of time for the confrontation. Let’s just say that it didn’t go well. I didn’t get the worst ending, but I definitely didn’t heroically save the town and my classmates either.
The slow pace and odd art style may be off-putting for some gamers. However, the recent success of games such as Return of the Obra Din and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine show that there should be plenty of room for heavily stylized old-school looking games, provided they have a good hook. Provided that one-man developer Panstasz can iron out a few of the poorly explained elements that confounded me in the demo fans of adventure and Roguelike (or would this be a Roguelike-like?) games are going to be in for a treat when World of Horror comes out later this year on Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation®4, and Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
Technology. What are you going to do?
As developer Pawel Kozminski described his game, “I set out to create something that illustrates just how vulnerable one’s sanity can be. I want World of Horror to haunt players in a way that creates an uncomfortable sense of apprehension, something that slowly builds uneasiness and anxiety through atmosphere and the uncanny.”
Gamers interested in learning more about World of Horror can check out the official website, visit the official Discord channel, and follow both Ysbryd Games and Panstasz on Twitter.
