World of Horror is one of the strangest experiences I’ve played this year. From developer panstasz, World of Horror markets itself as a combination of the works of Junji Ito, H.P. Lovecraft, and ’80s text-based adventures. I’m admittedly a fan of all of those things but very rarely are any of them pulled off with an inkling of success in modern gaming. So with an open mind I booted up World of Horror and was met with the most unexpected gaming experience.

Visually, World of Horror is a lot to take in. The game employs a 1 or 2-bit art style that instantly evokes feelings of booting up a game from a floppy disk. From here I was overwhelmed with menus upon menus upon more menus. Thankfully choosing the “normal” difficulty activates a brief but intuitive tutorial that walks you through every element of the user interface. Before I knew it, I was off to the races and falling deep into the World of Horror.