9. World of Horror

Japanese horror meets cosmic horror meets "What the hell is that?"

World of Horror looks like somebody fed a Lovecraft book and a Junji Ito manga into an ancient computer and asked it to create a video game.

And somehow, it worked.

The game's deliberately retro visual style makes everything look like an ancient computer-generated nightmare. You're confronted with strange creatures, bizarre events, disturbing locations and increasingly horrifying supernatural mysteries.

The important thing is that World of Horror isn't trying to make you feel powerful.

You're investigating things that are bigger than you.

Stranger than you.

And considerably more interested in ruining your afternoon than respecting your personal boundaries.

The game's mythology revolves around an impending apocalypse and supernatural entities that are far beyond normal human understanding.

It's Lovecraftian horror filtered through Japanese horror aesthetics, old-school RPG mechanics and a visual style that makes everything look like it was printed by a haunted dot-matrix printer.

And that's a compliment.

Why it's Lovecraftian: Cosmic entities, insanity, occult mysteries, doomed investigations and the overwhelming feeling that reality is barely holding itself together.

Best played: At 2 a.m. when every noise in your house suddenly becomes evidence of an ancient god.