WaxWorks

Horrorsoft's instant success in the computer-gaming horror field was brought about by Elvira and Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus. Carrying on its tradition of pixelized decapitations, mutilations and coagulated blood, Horrorsoft introduces its latest endeavor, WaxWorks.

A curse has loomed over a family's history for years, laid down by a punished witch. For each set of twins born, one child would belong to darkness and the other to light. And now the curse has taken its toll again, this time with you and your twin brother, who has disappeared to fulfill his destiny as the evil "other half." Using Uncle Boris' waxworks scenes, you'll travel to four distinct locations in your family's history to dispose of the evil twin within that time.

The atmosphere is decidedly different in nature for each of the four waxworks. Victorian-era London and its search for Jack the Ripper is different in graphics and content from an abandoned mine shaft, which is complete with mutated plant men and a setting that looks like a spoof of B horror movies.

It's no wonder then that WaxWorks relies so little on actual text and NPC interaction to deliver the horrifying feel. It's safe to say that Horrorsoft wanted to deliver sheer horror (and aftermaths of grotesque violence) through pictures alone, as the small amounts of conversation and scenic descriptions do nothing to induce spine-tingling sensations found in good horror novels. There's certainly nothing wrong with this, it just should be noted by any prospective buyer that horror, at least in this game, is a graphical feast, not a prosaic journey.

WaxWorks plays in similar fashion to Elvira II, using a large window to serve as the player's eyes into the world, with a separate inventory screen that occupies the bottom of the screen. How you go about interacting with the various locations is fairly straightforward; to grab an item, click on its image in the view window and select the take icon. If an item you're carrying can be used in the immediate area, select it from your inventory and a special command will appear detailing the specific action that may be performed with the item.

But it's here that WaxWorks' interface shows signs of inconsistency. Some items are used through a separate command that appears on-screen, while other items require a "click-and-drag" technique to take effect (which isn't completely explained in the manual). Add to this the lack of feedback from the program whenever something doesn't seem to work: Instead of a message along the lines of "You can't do that," or "That item doesn't work here," you're greeted with absolutely nothing, making it difficult to determine whether the item you're trying to use is the wrong one or whether there's anything to be done at all.

WaxWorks, though a little less than intuitive with the interface, is probably the best yet from Horrorsoft. It fills the void when it comes to computer-gaming horror, and, with a saturation of more fantasy and science-fiction games than ever before, a small vacation to the macabre displays of the waxworks might be the break you've been looking for.

I'll Be Honest, when I was a kid Waxworks scared the hell out of me. In fact, it's probably the scariest game I've ever played. Even now, over a decade later, I look back at the screenshots and that little twinge of terror is still located somewhere deep in the core of my being.

Nowadays, with all your fancy 360° viewing and freedom of movement, games can't seem to deliver that same sense of pure claustrophobia and panic you got from navigating the Horrorsoft's boxy world. Yeah, these days flickscreen games are pretty much all rubbish, but back when they weren't, Waxworks always stood out for me, even though everybody else seems to hate it. But I don't care about those people, so I'm going to abuse my power and write about a crappy flick-screen horror game I played 15 years ago. Basically, you played some bloke whose brother went missing in your uncle's waxworks years and years ago. Now, with your uncle's death and ghostly reappearance in a crystal ball, you find out that he's still alive, as a manifestation of pure, grotesque evil, controlled by a witch's curse. Your only choice is to head into five individually themed waxwork 'levels' and remove the malevolence within, before finally confronting the baleful witch and removing the curse.

This is easier said than done - as with most older games, Waxworks is rock hard and requires you, should you wish to beat the game, to manually map out the levels using a pen and paper! How retro is that? The individual levels are interesting - a graveyard, Victorian London at the height of Jack the Ripper's terror, a mine with hideous mutant creatures, and an Egyptian pyramid - and you can die in a vast number of hideous ways. Horror gaming has never been as spine-tingling since, and is unlikely to be again.