World Of Horror review: a weird and wonderful horror adventure in time for Halloween

WORLD OF HORROR

Experience the quiet terror of this 1-bit love letter to Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft. Navigate a hellish roguelite reality with turn-based combat and unforgiving choices. Experiment with your deck of event cards to discover new forms of cosmic horror in every playthrough. The inevitable awaits...

Being as much of an insufferable, online-but-ultimately-in-quite-a-basic-way person as I am, I'm a Junji Ito girlie. The horror manga artist has an immediately recognisable style that intersects detailed, line heavy art with strange and upsetting concepts, and some of his short stories have acquired a sort of semi-memetic status ("This is my hole! It was made for me!"). If you're at all familiar with Junji Ito's work you will look at unforgiving almost-text-adventure World Of Horror and go "Huh, that's inspired by Junji Ito."

This isn't just because it looks like his work but rendered in MSPaint, or because it contains, just, direct references to it, but because of the whole vibe. You encounter face-sloughing-off kinds of monsters and vengeful spirits inspired by Japanese folkloric yokai, but also weirdo janitors doing stuff like turning the swim team into mermaids in a kind of pervier version of Tusk. At the same time, there's a streak of the Lovecraftian in play to keep it nice and legally distinct, as each self-contained run at the titular world is an attempt to save your town from destruction at the hands of an Old God (they earn the leaden thud of the capital letters). You will fail a lot. But isn't failure part of the fun!? Imagine that enthusiastic question as a big spoonful of marmite popped into your mouth.

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