PAX East Spotlight: World of Horror

By Lowfat

Don’t play World of Horror if you value your sanity. You have been warned. World of Horror is a retro RPG-adventure published by Ysbyrd games about a quiet seaside town infested with cultists and extradimensial horrors. Things get worse from there.

Explore the corrupted town. Interact with unnatural locations and their corrupted denizens as you struggle to solve the ten mysteries plaguing the populace – and perhaps the world. Arm yourself with bats, knives, firearms, and more as you combat increasingly aggressive fiends while struggling to maintain your strength and sanity. The low-fi chip music gnaws at your sanity in real life as your character falls prey to the in-game otherworldly demons.

World of Horror is the multi-year project from one-man developer panstaz, a dentist armed only with MS-Paint and apparently oodles of patience (really!). The stark 1-bit images are competently inspired by Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft. They are as wonderfully retro as they are chilling and disgusting.

World of Horror is available now in early access on Steam (two mysteries). The full version, featuring additional mysteries, will be available late 2020 on Steam for PC and Mac OS X, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox Game Pass for PC (beta).