WORLD OF HORROR's long-promised 1.2 update, subtitled AS BELOW SO ABOVE, is out now on PC. It is free for everyone who owns panstasz's one-bit cosmic horror roguelite on Steam, GOG or itch.io, and it runs on both Windows and macOS in every language the base game supports. Console players have a longer wait: the developer and publishers Ysbryd Games and PLAYISM say v1.2 will reach consoles in 2027. The PC timing is no accident. The team had promised the update would land by All Hallows' Eve, and it made it with a day to spare.
Two new ways for Shiokawa to end
The biggest additions are two new Old God options to preside over a run. The first is IKT-YOSIS, The First Nightmare. It sleeps beneath the mountains around Shiokawa, and while it slumbers it slowly reshapes the world above, which is where the update's new weird weather system comes from. Forecasts now matter: if you believe them, you can save the hardest mysteries for days when conditions are on your side. Get it wrong and the town's weathermen are not the only ones who vanish.
The second option is not a single god at all. The War for Shiokawa sets four cults against each other, each summoning its own eldritch master at the same time. You still get one ending, but it now depends on a four-way struggle rather than a single doom clock ticking toward one monster. For a game that already asks you to juggle Stamina, Reason and Doom at once, a run with four Old Gods in play is likely to become the new endurance test for veterans.
New faces, and a mountain to get lost on
Three new playable investigators join the roster. Panstasz has named two of them so far. Kiriko is a tarotist, and her deck reflects not what will happen but what must be done. Satoshi is a young hiker who knows the mountain trails, which matters because the mountains are themselves new. They are a whole new location with their own events, and the developer warns that it is easy to get injured or lost up there. The town also gets a reopened metro line, which shortens travel between locations and gives you more time to plan. Inevitably, people have started going missing on it.
When panstasz first laid out the update, the stated goal was to grow the game by roughly a fifth and to bring cut and unfinished content back in. The roadmap listed around 60 new events, 10 new allies, a reworked conversation system that fires between investigations, about 20 new injuries, mutations and curses, 19 new enemies and 30 new items. The release notes for the shipped version confirm more events, enemies, items, spells, curses and injuries, along with balance changes, quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes, plus a streamlined interface that needs fewer clicks to run a playthrough.
Scenario Mode arrives with Forest of Fear
The other headline feature is Scenario Mode, which fans have asked about since the game's early access days. Scenarios are self-contained stories set before the events of the main game, with their own allies, enemies, events and multiple endings. The first is FOREST OF FEAR / TAPES OF TRAGEDY. It follows Makoto, an overachieving member of the school AV club who sets out to film a documentary about the oldest legend in the woods outside town. Anyone who has seen the base game's FREAKY FEATURE OF FOUND FOOTAGE mystery already knows how badly that goes. The scenario explains how it got there, and panstasz has hinted that players who dig deep enough will finally find a way to repair the forest tapes, and a telescope.
Modding gets real tools
v1.2 also overhauls modding on the Steam Workshop. Creators can now build their own enemies, events and mysteries, with mysteries able to use unique layouts and chained events. Custom UI and flag support make it possible to design something that plays quite differently from the stock investigations. The developer had promised that the reworked system would stay backward compatible with content made for 1.0, so existing community mysteries should keep working.
What the update costs, and when consoles get it
The update costs nothing. WORLD OF HORROR itself sells for $14.99 on Steam. It left early access at its 1.0 launch in October 2023, and v1.2 is the most substantial content drop since then. Earlier promises for the update also included three new challenges, 22 new achievements with an improved tracker, and cloud saves. Console versions of v1.2 are in progress with the aim of parity with PC, and the current target is 2027. For anyone who finished the game's mysteries long ago, Halloween weekend is a good excuse to return to Shiokawa.
