Waxworks - Oh! The Horror
Inspired by the 1988 film Waxwork, and not the 1983 C-64 game Waxworks
Disclaimer: Waxworks is a horror game with pretty detailed graphics. Some may find this game offensive. It definitely is not a game for minors.
Waxworks was developed by Horror Soft in 1992 for the PC, Amiga, and Macintosh, and published by Accolade. Horror Soft released three horror games before. Notable are the two Elvira titles Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus.
The company rebranded after the release of Waxworks to Adventure Soft, which became known for the Simon the Sorcerer series.
Waxworks is a real-time adventure horror game with, very light, RPG elements. It has some puzzles to solve as well, but there is also a lot of combat.
Where to get:
Waxwork’s Story
The story of Waxworks centers around a century old family curse and an unnamed protagonist, who happens to have a twin brother Alex. Alex disappeared during the teenager years while exploring a mine.
Uncle Boris, a rich and eccentric man lived nearby in a mansion. The uncle’s death has the player revisit the seaside town of Vista Forge to attend the funeral.
The player remembers a tale about the family curse. One of the ancestors caught a witch stealing a chicken. He chopped of a hand of the witch, and was cursed by the witch in return.
Whenever twins were born, one of the twins would turn to the dark side.
The game begins at the mansion. With the uncle dead, the player is invited to enter the mansion by the family butler. The butler hands over a crystal ball, which soon displays the face of the recently deceased uncle and a message.
In the message, the uncle tasks the player with facing the four most evil twins of the family’s history. These need to be destroyed in their time period to life the curse from the family.
Some Notes
The mansion acts as the starting place for the four different epochs the player has to travel to. The epochs are depicted by waxworks exhibits.
There is Egypt, a mine, Jack the Ripper, and a graveyard. All are accessible from the start, but it is highly recommended to use the order Graveyard, Egypt, Mine, and Jack the Ripper. Graveyard is the easiest of the levels. While it does include a bit of fighting, it is very light on puzzles and the area is not large either.
The game is unforgiving and you will encounter situations where you will die. It is a good idea to save often because of that. Combat can be unfair at times, and you may die without having done anything wrong.
According to the manual, stepping into one of the exhibits makes the player an inhabitant of it.
Some tips:
You do not need to fight all the time. Sometimes, you can just run away.
To fight, you first need to select the fight icon and then on the enemy in front of you. Fight remains active unless you move or do something else.
You can heal using the crystal ball, but only when you have certain ingredients.
You have multiple save slots, use them.
You always start at level one in each scenario.
Waxworks Gameplay
You control the game with the mouse and keyboard. While you can theoretically use the mouse exclusively, you will be at a disadvantage because it will take longer to react.
The interface displays movement controls on the left. The middle displays the player’s view, information and character stats. The right lists actions, the compass, pause option and the disk icon for saving.
There are four player stats:
HP — Hit Points. Increases with each level. Player dies when HPs reach 0 or below.
LEV — Level. The player’s current level. Increases when you gain experience.
EXP — Experience. Given for various actions and tasks, such as fighting and killing monsters or solving puzzles.
PSY — Psychic Energy. This helps the player contact the deceased uncle using the crystal ball. The uncle may give hints or information, and also heal the player.
You interact with elements by clicking on them or using one of the available action icons on the right. To take an item, for instance, you’d select the open hand symbol and then the item that you see on the screen. This is as fiddly as it sounds.
To fight, you select the fight icon and then attack the creature on the screen. Here you can attack various body parts, including limbs or the head.
To equip weapons, you need to select the axe icon first, then a weapon in the inventory, and then the use action. This weapon is used automatically from that moment on.
Combat is a hit and miss affair. Even with a weapon equipped, you may miss often and get wounded severely or even killed. To make matters worse, enemies seem to spawn randomly. It happened that I faced four or five enemies in a row without moving much.
Even worse, if possible, is that you will encounter enemies that you cannot kill at all, or need a very specific weapon for.
It is necessary to find certain items in each scenario, as these are required to complete it. If you do not have the right item with you, and/or use it in the right situation, you may die over and over again.
The quests are straightforward in the Graveyard scenario, but they get considerably more puzzly in later scenarios. In Egypt, for instance, you have to find a lot of items, which you need at a later stage.
Verdict
Waxworks is a pretty tough punishing game. Some aspects of it, including combat, have not aged well. It is the randomness of combat that is frustrating. Add to that the fiddly controls, and you may end up with a frustrating experience at times.
There is also the level design, which feels a bit dull at times. In the graveyard, for instance, you have to move between different places several times, and finding your way is not exactly easy there.
There is also the requirement of finding specific items to progress in a scenario. If you miss an item, you need to backtrack until you find it. Since there is no way of knowing which items you need, you always have the nagging feeling that you may have missed something that is essential.
If you can look beyond that, and do not mind dying a lot, you get a challenging horror game that should appeal to die hard fans of the genre. Everyone else is better off watching a let’s play on YouTube.