Is This Game Dead? (Answer: No!)

I was talking with my wife about this game over the weekend, and she expressed her disappointment on how it never receives updates. Truthfully, it was the first time I'd thought about it since making my 2020 GOTY list, so I decided to do some digging. Sure enough, the last update it received was October 2020. Most of the Steam discussions currently revolve around whether or not the game is abandonware, and one post in particular states the creator hasn't even posted in the game's Discord since January 2021.

Has anyone heard anything about this game? It seemed very promising when Ben and Jan showed it off last year. I played a few hours of it and enjoyed it enough to make it a 2020 honorable mention. However, I can't recommend anyone take a swing at it in its current state.

Update as of October 19th, 2023: the game just released its 1.0 version today. I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something, this game rules!

Yeah, I think it might just be best to assume that there won't be any more updates. I wouldn't hold my breath.

I hope I'm proven wrong though.

A shame. I put a couple hours into it last year and enjoyed its creepy vibe.

I think the game is pretty damn cool for what it is and I do not regret my purchase even slightly. Still, would love to see more cases, more outcomes for exsisting cases and possibly a revamped endgame. But yeah, Pantasz has seemingly dropped off the face of the earth - don't expect any more than there is in the game currently.

The last thing released by the dev seems to be an entry in the Dread X Collection 2 (a horror game jam type of thing). It's somewhat stylish but not very good in my opinion.

That’s sad to hear. I remember World of Horror being pretty well received among roguelite enthusiasts back in 2020. It has a really distinct early PC look, and the Junji Ito monsters/Japanese town with more Lovecraftian small-town doomsday cult was an interesting genre blend.

I was really thinking about picking this up whenever I heard that it was hitting 1.0. :(

I really REALLY liked this game, but yes, it's looking like production has stopped. Moreso, if you dig around discord and the steam forums, there are theories that the developer died due to how there were quite a few updates and general enthusiasm on the game, and one of his last tweets were about physical swag promotional stuff. I don't know about that, but it s weird that he went from active engagement with the community to total and sudden silence with no indication as to why. Morbidly enough, there is now a whole ghost story theory on the death theory too.

There is also the usual ideas of it having all be a scam from the beginning or the dev had a stress breakdown and just outright quit. Another theory is that Junji Ito sued him due to the art style cribbing a bit too hard. I think the stress one is the most likely if any. It went from niche to extremely hot pretty fast after the early access launch, and the demanding ingrates of the internet mobs have broken bigger games for less.

I don't regret buying my copy. I got like 10 hours out of poking around all the different stories and experimenting and going for the achievements and unlocks. It was great fun. It's a bummer I'll not likely see the fully intent of the game, but that's ok, some things you just have to be grateful you got any piece of. and who knows, maybe someone else makes a similar thing inspired by this.

Oh totally. I got my money's worth several times over with the amount that I played of the game.

I hope the dev is doing alright (and if he's not doing alright, if he's at least finding whatever help he needs to eventually be doing alright)

It's a shame that the Steam page has been getting a ton of negative reviews that state "game is trash, has been abandoned." Honestly the game is pretty well featured and has some great mod support. You could easily call what's currently available "1.0" with a very minimal amount of additional polish. The "take the money and run" thing just doesn't make sense given how much work has already gone into this game, and it's not like it was a kickstarter. The early access pitch has a lot of very conditional, non-committal language -- meaning the dev wasn't beholden to doing a lot of the additional work they've already done and could have easily shipped 1.0 on many occasions. There's the unfinished console ports but there was never a way to pre-order them or anything, so I guess the only pressure or promise there is on the publisher side if we assume ports are a requirement. You'd think that'd be easily done by an external studio if push came to shove and the dev left or gave up though. There's something there that just doesn't add up if the dev truly just walked off with the money.

I think what's really going on is it's a single dev and the pandemic started only a few months before the last updates were posted. If the dev has walked away to any degree I doubt it's at all malicious, and I can't blame them honestly given the terrible dilemma of falling behind on your work in development and having to choose between facing the community's abuse or recluding from it. There's something to be said about the importance of communication and which of the options is best, but I can't fault a solo dev for choosing the second option, especially given the last year like damn.

I have learned that Gamers (the kind that write Steam reviews) do not like it when an Early Access game is not finished, or hits 1.0 but is not "really" finished to their satisfaction. Gamers do not deal with abandonment well.

Another more extreme example that comes to mind is Double Fine's Space Base DF-9, which now sits at Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam.

Granted, that game (sort of a space Dwarf Fortress) hit 1.0 in a pretty rough state that still needed a lot of bug fixing and never got a lot of the features implied in Early Access, and then the dev team for it mostly got laid off and the game was never officially patched anymore. Though to their credit the Lua source code was made available and fans made their own patches/mods/updates for the game. From the sounds of it, after an initial small burst of sales, it kinda stopped selling during its early access. Call it a failure of marketing or whatever, but the game wasn't finding an audience that justified ongoing dev costs to keep adding features to the game, so they had to make the business call to sink a bit more dev money into it to basically 1.0 release it as-is.

Even with that explanation, it seems like not many owners of the game were very sympathetic to Double Fine on that one. Keep in mind this was 2014, during that fully independent, hit-or-miss 2011-2017 period of Double Fine where they were putting out like 5 games a year of varying quality. I couldn't tell you how responsible some of their financial decisions were during that time, and now it's Microsoft calling the shots.

Back to World of Horror: Gamers get mad even when a developer says "Look, we really tried with this Early Access game, but nobody was buying it so we're ceasing development." I imagine Gamers get madder when there isn't any explanation at all, as they imagine the indie dev to be some kind of cartoon villain running away with a burlap sack full of gold coins. Gamers are the worst.

The cited post is "ANother Early access scam AMIRITE HASHTAG GAMERS RISE UP!" nonsense.

@magnetphonics: yeah, it’s not great how the conversations on forums went from “it’s a spooky ARG with version 1.0 as the prize when it’s won” to “spoiled dev, how dare they, Kickstarter scam, how dare we not have everything we ever want.”

It is also perfectly plausible that the developer decided to work on the game in silence, and will push out a 1.0 update once he is satisfied with it.

Though the circumstances are a bit different as the game was kickstarted and not in early access, Omocat stopped all community updates on the psychological horror RPG Omori for three years after it got kickstarted in 2014, but then it finally came out last Christmas to great reviews and good sales. It turned out she simply disliked the community pressure and expectations that build with it, so she decided to focus all her energy on development and making the game the best there is.

It could also be that he abandoned ship, but regardless of the truth, dealing with gamer communities is a complete nightmare.

To be clear: I don’t at all endorse the views in the thread I linked to, and I only included it because it mentioned the length of the developer’s hiatus. Some of the other threads on the Steam page are extremely gross, like another one that just assumes the developer died. And if they did walk away from the project for their own health: good! I’d rather have an incomplete game I enjoyed for several hours than one completed only through the developer suffering.

(PS thank you for the responses, they’ve been informative!)

@allthedinos: agreed. One reason my dream of joining game development stopped being my dream was seeing how awful gamer communities have gotten to be in the past two decades. There is some traction towards more positive vibes in some places, but still so much negativity too.

Mental health of a human being will always be more important than a game to amuse some people for a few hours. No game is worth psychological damage, and to those that say people should toughen up, I’d say that sentiment is a sign of needing to take care of themselves mentally in and of itself.

I doubt the dev would see this, but if they did, I’d just say thanks for the beta, it was great, you don’t owe anyone anything. Take care of you.

I really hope not. WoH was one of my top games of 2020... Seeing it get abandoned is a real bummer. Heres to hoping we get something, whether thats an actual update, or atleast some word from the dev, by Halloween. But even as it stands, it's an awesome game.

There's no real evidence it's been abandoned other than speculation.

Looks okay but if I were gonna play a horror roguelike it'll be Routine. Sitting here waiting for its release! :)

@retris: oh shit. We this is confirmation on pretty much everything speculated in the thread in like a sentence.

@retris: Thank you for this! I’m sorry to hear they had a miserable year, but it’s good to hear they’re feeling better enough to share some updates.

As of yesterday in the US (December 1st, 2021), update 0.9.84 has been added on Steam. The full notes are here, but the focus appears to be characters and customization. There's also a "Challenges" mode that puts you in the middle of a pre-selected playthrough, so anyone who felt like they got their fill so far has a reason to return.

I think we can safely close this thread now, as my original question has been answered with an emphatic "no".

Changed the subject of this post to reflect the good news of the day: World of Horror 1.0 is out! Can’t wait to dig into the full features, I’ve loved this game every time I’ve played it.

Of course it’s getting review-bombed thanks to its translation being delayed a whole week, because none of us can have nice things.