I don't think I've ever played anything quite like world of horror, and I have to say I've really enjoyed it. It feels in a similar vein to games like Darkest Dungeon, where it's not so much about avoiding things going wrong (they will), but in trying to mitigate the damage. It has a lot of replay value, and I find the atmosphere it creates to be very good. It feels a bit like playing an adventure board game, like Arkham Horror, but in digital form. You go through a series of random events, often ones which go badly, and try your best to stay alive til the end as anything and everything slowly wears down your health, sanity, or speeds the apocalyptic awakening of an old god. I'm leaving off a star for two reasons: 1. The game is very dense and confusing when you first start, and has quite a learning curve for what is honestly a fairly simple game at its core. I know the goal was to imitate old game UI, but I think the complexity of it does the game a disservice, and it could be significantly streamlined in any number of ways to make for a more enjoyable experience. 2. The atmosphere is really amazing in this game, but I find that the way the stories unfold often doesn't quite live up to the atmosphere they're creating. They can feel very disjointed, and while the gameplay is fun, it often feels like you are doing random events until the story is ready to be ended. There's no obvious way to influence the story you're part of, really. There are a few exceptions to this, with some of the mysteries you undertake having a really different structure where you go to a different place and have totally different options for exploration. I think these are the best, though they have the downside of being less replayable in some ways. The festival mystery strikes a really good balance between the two styles I think, for example.
This game felt extremely fresh to me. I came into it having very little knowledge of it, and even a couple hours in I found myself being very unsure what type of gameplay would be on the table from it, and I mean that in a good way. It's a bit genre bending, presents an intriguing and complex mystery, and feels like a modern take on the adventure game genre, one which doesn't shy away from having a few more action game elements mixed in (while still staying solidly cerebral in its main elements). This next part contains a minor spoiler: One thing I can't praise enough in this game is how they handle the time loop aspect of it. I often hate time loop games, because even if they start good, they often end with having to do the same tasks over and over until you get the "perfect day" and win the game. Forgotten City manages to avoid that pitfall entirely through clever choices in the game design which allow you to bypass or automate things you did before, allowing you focus on what you haven't figured out yet. This can sometimes lead to slightly weird dialog, where characters might be a bit too quick to ignore the fact you appeared out of nowhere and know everything about them already, but I found the gameplay wins from this system far, far outweighted in story jank that resulted from it.
