When World of Horror first burst onto the early access scene back in 2020, it looked absolutely fantastic. It promised the ability to step inside Junji Ito mangas, Japanese urban legends, and completely original Lovecraftian stories. It had a huge amount of promise that, unfortunately, hasn’t really borne fruit. I’ve been conflicted about my opinion on this game, and that will probably shine through in this review. There’s a lot to like about World of Horror, but so many small little irritations that ultimately detract from what could be a sensational interactive horror experience.
Let’s start with the setting: You play as a character exploring the town of Shiokawa, Japan, a name which, somewhat unsettlingly, was actually the name of a small town in Fukushima Prefecture. Strange things are afoot in Shiokawa: Robed figures have been spotted and eerie situations permeate every aspect of the town, from its schools to its shrines. Some mysteries will take you outside of Shiokawa, but it’s where you’ll spend most of your time. It’s up to you to solve five mysteries across the town and then banish the evil for good.
A Ghastly, Gangrenous GUI
The town itself is a neat little slice of 1980s Japan, but getting around it is a different story, and where the first issues with the game start to rear their MS-Painted heads. The UI in this game is heinous. It is the true horror inherent in World of Horror. Every button is far too small and unintuitive. I appreciate that it is aping old PC interfaces, but really? There is no quality of life to this game’s UI, none whatsoever, and it holds you back every step of the way.
The town exploration is the biggest offender: Once you get into a mystery, you’re tasked with selecting where to go next, which essentially involves clicking on a square on a map to go to that location, then investigating the area, where you may find various grim gribblies or a strange situation. That’s it. There’s another issue with this, which we’ll get to later.
The combat UI (yes, there’s combat) is atrocious as well. Icons too small to make sense of assault your eyeballs with every passing second, as surely as the enemies that assault your character. The size of the icons isn’t helped by the fact that the interface is contrived to appear on a CRT monitor, which means it doesn’t take up much screen real estate.
By solving mysteries, completing events, and emerging victorious in combat, you gain XP which can grant you stat increases (yes, there are stats, too), and various perks. Unlike some other games, the level-up UI is perhaps the easiest one to understand.
The user interface in World of Horror is real bad. Even once you’ve learned where the buttons are, it’s easy to misclick and get messed around by a UI that is almost actively hostile. It’s hard to judge the merits of a game when it’s almost impossible to play.
The Peril of Pacing Problems
Pacing is another issue that comes up time and again in World of Horror. The game will drag you through a mystery by the nose. On that horrendous map that I previously mentioned, the next location that you need to go to will be circled, which makes what could be an interesting detective/deduction game into what is essentially a visual novel with a few too many extraneous appendages. It fits with the Lovecraftian theme, I guess. 
Here’s one particularly glaring example of this issue: A girl was recovering after attempting suicide. The game told me she was recovering in a village. I dutifully, like a diligent detective, decided to go to the square on the map marked “Village” to talk to her, even though the circled button said “Downtown.” I get to the Village—no girl. The game might have said she was in a village, but actually she was downtown, baby. This could have just been a simple annoying miscommunication, but the game has a Doom meter that increases with each step you take, and if it reaches 100 percent, it’s game over.
A visual novel like World of Horror doesn’t need combat, and if you want to include it, at least make it more interesting.
Each mystery does have multiple endings (at least the ones that I played), and the circled buttons only take you through the route to ending A. While you can explore the other locations, you often get nowhere; all the while, the game’s Doom counter ticks up.
That’s before we get into another issue this game has: combat. I’m not necessarily averse to the idea of combat in a game like this, but I wish it would commit to following its visual novel or roguelike influences, rather than trying to smush them together. The combat is plagued by problems with the UI, as previously mentioned, but it’s also just not compelling at all. You pile up attacks and actions with action points, then set them off and watch it go. It’s perfunctory in the extreme. There are spells and other spiritual attacks that you can use, but it’s much the same as simply smacking a possessed entity with a broken bottle.
A visual novel like World of Horror doesn’t need combat, and if you want to include it, at least make it more interesting.
The Complex and Compelling Calling of Catastrophes
By now, you’re probably thinking that I hate this game. You’re half right. I don’t like a lot of what this game does. It feels like it’s trying to do a whole bunch of things, and most of them don’t work particularly well. Yet when everything does come together, and you’re riding down the Mountains of Madness on a horror rollercoaster, solving mysteries and engaging in fisticuffs with horrors from beyond this plane of existence, it feels great.
But that’s the core issue at the heart of World of Horror: A lot of the time, it’s pretty dull. When it isn’t, it’s a really enjoyable horror game. The writing is occasionally stellar in its creepiness, while other times falling into clichés that you’ve read many times before.
It’s not particularly scary, as horror games go; it’s much more into icking you out. Less spooky and more goopy. Yet if you’ve read Junji Ito and are into all the various ways that a human body can be messed around with, you’ll recognize and appreciate the influences, nonetheless. The art is a massive saving grace for this game, all twisted and weird (or should that be wyrd?).
Final Thoughts: Is World of Horror Worth Playing?
World of Horror is a confused and confusing game. It’s torn between being a roguelike and a visual novel, between cultivating horror over the course of minutes and plopping body horror into your lap like the world’s worst waiter, and between being immediately interesting and ploddingly leaden.
I really wanted to like this game. More than that, I wanted to love this game, which is perhaps why this review comes across as so scathing. I’ve been let down. I followed this game for years, awaiting the full release with a heart full of hope. I wanted to spend hours upon hours exploring Shiokawa and the game’s other environs. As it is, it’s a game begging for quality-of-life updates that would make it a joy to explore the undoubtedly impressive selection of mysteries that it has to offer. At present, World of Horror vacillates between being overly tedious, pulling you around by the nose, and sometimes being the game that I really wanted it to be. It’s a frustrating experience, with moments of brilliance that shine through like the color out of space.
Score: 6.7/10
World of Horror, developed by Panstasz, launches on October 19, 2023, for PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the publisher.
