I am completely engulfed in a sheaf of spider silk, only my eyeballs still visible as I wait my turn to be devoured. I failed to save the city from the insatiable spider Old God, and now I and all the inhabitants of Shiokawa, Japan, are trapped in his web. This time I had come this far, solved all the mysteries pinned to my bulletin board, but in the end, I couldn’t escape the doom that had been closing in on me.
Yeah horror world It could be reduced to a single word, it would be “dread.” It is a point-and-click cosmic horror game created by Polish developer and dentist Pawel Kozminski (aka Panstasz). And after spending years in early access, Ysbryd Games finally released it to the public this month on Steam, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch. It was worth the wait.
horror world is largely text-based and plays like a choose-your-own-adventure story, one in which most of your choices are bad and will inevitably lead to a gruesome death or irrevocable madness. Players must solve five mysteries that torment the townspeople, gathering information and fighting monstrous entities that try to get in their way. A slippery, boil-covered former teacher here, a woman with shards of broken ribs embedded in the gaping hole in her face there.
In the meantime, you’ll work to prevent the Old God from setting his sights on Shiokawa for that race, and you’ll need to keep an eye on the ever-moving Doom meter to see how close you are to being defeated. Only after you have obtained five keys by solving each of the five mysteries will you be able to unlock the city’s lighthouse, where you can banish the Old God. That is, if you are able to overcome the tests on the way to the top. It’s also a roguelite, so be prepared to start from the beginning every time you make a fatal misstep.
The horror manga-style role-playing game does not hide its influences from Junji Ito and HP Lovecraft. It’s so unsettling that you’ll feel nervous and on edge even when nothing happens, which in some investigations happens most of the time. Evil may not come for you at that moment, but there is a feeling that it could come at any time.
When those little shocks arrive (a particularly nasty attacker or a rumbling sound cutting through the chiptune score), they’re made even more jarring thanks to the high-contrast 1- or 2-bit visuals (you can choose at the beginning). ) that were created, incredibly, in MS Paint. It nails the Ito-style gore, often hard to stomach, and there are some scenes I had to force myself not to shy away from (a certain DIY eyeball operation comes to mind).
You have a few options for approaching the game, in terms of difficulty and complexity. Her short tutorial, “The Chilling History of School Scissors,” is an easy introduction. And in the beginner’s main story mode, “Extracurricular Activities,” you’ll start with a mystery already solved.
Players also have the option of a “Quick Play” mode, where elements such as your character, the Old God, and backstory are selected randomly, or a fully custom game where you choose your own character and story elements. . That last one is the most challenging route. You can also choose from a large number of color palettes at the beginning of each game, if you want to mix them up.
While the turn-based combat is nothing revolutionary, I found it quite engaging. There’s no guarantee that all your hits will hit, and relying on spirit attacks when facing a ghost-type enemy is a stressful game of “guess the right combo.” Keeps things interesting, if a little frustrating. Since the races are relatively short (about an hour, 30 minutes or so), you don’t feel like it’s crushing your soul every time you die and have to start over. If anything, it becomes an addictive cycle.
Where horror world What really stands out is his attention to gruesome details. A television in her house plays non-stop spooky newscasts, including one about a dentist who replaced his human patients’ teeth with dog teeth. (Remember, the developer is also a dentist.) Look through the peephole in her apartment door and you might see a shadow at the end of the hallway, or the rapidly receding face of someone lurking around the corner, or just an empty hallway. Twisted demons wait behind dead-end classroom doors.
Things are rarely the same when you come back to them. Each mystery has multiple endings and multiple ways to get there, so you can’t predict what will happen next, even if you only play 10 races in a row. Some stories are more complicated than others and better thought out. But each has at least one gruesome element that justifies its place among the rest. Yeah horror world It’s anything, it’s effective and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/world-of-horror-is-a-skin-crawling-dread-machine-that-does-its-inspirations-proud-183000816.html?src =rss