It doesn’t take much to see why Japanese horror mangaka Junji Ito has become so beloved. Using a combination of absurd body horror and a continually building sense of dread, Ito’s work is always cruel, merciless, and above all else, captivating. From his longer serials such as Uzumaki, down to his shorter work, Ito strikes a nerve that few of his contemporaries can match. And it’s Ito’s talent for creating incomprehensible horrors that upcoming RPG World of Horror seeks to emulate.

“My main source of inspiration is the Japanese horror of the 70’s and 80’s,” Panstanz founder and sole developer Pawel Kozminski tells me. “I love the art of Junji Ito, the works of [H.P.] Lovecraft, and also old systems like the Macintosh II, PC-88 and PC-98.”

World of Horror is set in “198X” in a small seaside Japanese city. The Old Gods, based in part on the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, are rising, bringing with them an increase in madness and supernatural incidents. Playing as one of seven characters, you’ll investigate mysteries that are cropping up around town to try and find a way to prevent the Old Gods from destroying the world.

It’s a straightforward setup, but it’s in how World of Horror plays that sets it apart. After picking a character and an Old God to confront, you choose a mystery to investigate. From there, you’ll explore locations spread across the city, drawing event cards that are either random or curated through the creation of decks. Depending on your characters strengths, you’ll pass or fail the event, though occasionally you’ll take part in turn-based battles against various creatures.

“Each mystery is randomized internally,” Kozminski says. “Each time you play, you get different events you can go through. Everything you can see is a card. All the items, all the enemies, are represented in card form, which form decks. And you can mix and match them to tailor your own experience in order to make the game harder or easier for you.”

And if you don’t want to create your own decks, there are default decks that are available that are designed with each mystery in mind. Right now, there are roughly twenty different mysteries, that are playable, and Kozminski plans to support the game post-launch with free card packs. Those mysteries are as diabolical as they are diverse, and existing scenarios include the search for a scissor-wielding woman with a vicious smile that haunts the local school, and a festival in a far-flung village that dabbles with entities man was not meant to know.

In theory, each new playthrough of the game will be unique, as the scenarios unfold in an entirely different fashion each time you go through them. In my playthroughs of the demo, which is available for download on itch.io, those mechanics appeared to work as promised. Just in the span of one mystery, the aforementioned scissor-woman with the vertical smile, none of my half dozen or so playthroughs played out the same way.

One time, I stumbled across a biology classroom with a model of the human body that had an eerily beating human heart inside of it. When I investigated a rooftop, I was met by a girl wearing a demon mask; in another playthrough, that girl ambushed me in the hallway. The sigil I needed to draw to begin the ritual to banish the scissor-woman was wildly different with each attempt. I failed to complete the ritual in my first attempt; in the second, I became the creature’s thrall.

Due to the sheer number of ways, it can play out, and the positive reception from players so far, Kozminski has a fondness for this scenario in particular because it is a microcosm of the game as a whole.

“Because I see people enjoying it, so I know it’s a good one.” Kozminski says. “It’s the one I put the most work into. You can burn the school down earlier in the game, and if you play this scenario after you burn it down, it’s completely different. The scissor-woman is different, and you get different cards as well.”

This is all backed by an aesthetic that is easily the most impressive aspect of World of Horror. It emulates the graphical look of 1-bit computer games, being heavily pixelated throughout, and with a simple black and white color palette as its default appearance. If that’s not your style, there are over a dozen different color palettes to choose from, ranging from muted yellow to harsh red, that gives the world additional depth. And all of this was created using a program every PC owner has access to: Microsoft Paint. Meaning that Kozminski drew every single creature, object, and piece of background (of which there are many) by himself.

“I painted it all myself,” Kozminski laughs. “It was a lot of work, but I wouldn’t change it in retrospect, because the limitation of the software is really inspiring.”

It is here that World of Horror most invokes Ito’s work. The static images are disturbing, depicting hideous amalgamations of flesh and fungus, corpses covered in cobwebs and spiders, and people that just look… off. There are no jump scares to be found here, though the limited animation proves to be unsettling time and time again. Instead, much like Ito’s stories, there is only the underlying sense of dread that everything can, and likely will, fall apart when you turn the next corner.

Just as Ito’s work stands apart from his fellow mangaka, so too does World of Horror stand apart from other games of its ilk in how it uses cosmic horror. Through sinister cults, otherworldly beings, and the occasional fish-person disease, World of Horror is set to corrode your sense of reality when it launches later this year for Windows, Mac, Linux Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch.