A 1-bit RPG called World of Horror is releasing on February 20th to Steam's Early Access, billed as a cosmic horror experience taking inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft and renowned horror manga artist Junji Ito. The game is being made by a single developer named Pawel Kozminski and it is published by Ysbryd Games, a team which favors small, independent titles.
The 1-bit art style is a simplistic, rudimentary style, very low-tech and very much at odds with the high-end graphics seen in big-name titles like Red Dead Redemption 2. The art style saw its most recent success with Return of the Obra Dinn, a first-person puzzle game which released in 2018. That game earned great acclaim not only for its mystery-solving gameplay but for the way its art style heightened the atmosphere and mood of the genre. This art style actually won Obra Dinn the award for best art direction at the Game Awards the year it was released. Obra Dinn is hardly the first indie game to prove that realistic graphics aren't everything; the market is flooded with 8-bit indie games trying to hearken back to gaming's earliest days. Actual 1-bit titles, however, are much more of a rarity.
A new 1-bit RPG, however, is on the horizon in the form of World of Horror. This indie title uses 1-bit graphics to imitate the stark, stylized body horror of Junji Ito's work. This is no coincidence, as the game's Steam page (via Eurogamer) calls it "a 1-bit love letter to Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft." This deference to both figures is evident not only in the game's art style but in its subject matter; World of Horror takes place in a small Japanese fishing town where terrifying, otherworldly things are beginning to creep into the townsfolks' everyday life. According to World of Horror's information page, "it's the end of the world and the only solution is to confront the terror reigning over the apocalypse."
The game uses turn-based combat and a roguelite element to increase the stakes of the player's confrontations with the otherworldly. It advertises five playable characters to be released when the game hits Steam early access next month. The Steam page also mentions a unique element in the form of a deck of event cards, which can alter the course of a playthrough and can be changed by the player to discover new outcomes and decisions. Further details on how this event deck works are scarce.
World of Horror looks to be a thoroughly unique take on horror, a genre that has already been richly explored by the video game industry with great results. Like some of the best horror games out there, World of Horror doesn't rely on jumpscares to deliver its frights, depending instead upon its "unnerving environments and amorphous terrors." The developer's adoration of the source material is abundantly evident from every deeply terrifying screenshot, and one would be hard-pressed to find another faceless horror with this much heart put into it. For horror fans who want something new and strange, World of Horror looks like a very promising nightmare to have.
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