Waxworks

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Your uncle's waxworks, five cursed exhibits, and a twin brother to save.

Platforms: PC, Mac
Stores: GOG
Price: Paid
Rated: 3.8 out of 5 from GOG players (257 ratings)
Players: 1
Controls: Mouse: click the arrows to move, click enemies' body parts to strike and drag items to use them.
Made by: Horror Soft
Released: 1992

On PC: one of the PC horror games.

What frightens A family curse sends you into the cursed exhibits of your dead uncle's waxworks: an Egyptian pyramid, a vampire's domain, Jack the Ripper's London and a mine of plant mutants, where every death is drawn in lurid, stomach-turning detail.
Content: gore, graphic death scenes, violence.

Waxworks is a 1992 first-person horror dungeon crawler from Horror Soft. You inherit your uncle's waxworks and step through its exhibits into cursed worlds of the past to free your twin brother from a witch's curse, fighting and solving puzzles among some of the goriest death scenes of its time.

About Waxworks

Waxworks was made by Horror Soft, the British studio of the Elvira games, and published by Accolade in 1992 for MS-DOS and the Amiga. It was nominated for RPG of the Year by Computer Gaming World. GOG has sold it since 2009 for Windows and Mac, running in DOSBox.

When you were eight, your twin brother Alex vanished into the mine tunnels under the home of your Uncle Boris, owner of a waxworks full of demons. Twenty years later Boris dies and leaves you the collection, along with the news that Alex is alive but possessed by a five-hundred-year-old curse placed on your family by the witch Ixona. The only way to lift it is to step into the exhibits themselves.

Each exhibit is a world: a pyramid in ancient Egypt where a cult serves Anubis, a vampire's domain, Victorian London stalked by Jack the Ripper, and a mine overrun by plant mutants, before the witch's own period. You explore in first person, move with point-and-click controls, fight in real time by aiming at an enemy's body parts, level up and solve puzzles. You start each world from scratch, without the items of the last.

The game is remembered for its gore. Deaths, yours and others', are shown in full-screen detail that reviewers at the time called gruesome and stomach-turning. It suits players who like old dungeon crawlers and do not mind graphic violence, and fans of Horror Soft's Elvira games.

How to play Waxworks

Buy it on GOG and start it; GOG's edition runs the DOS game for you on Windows or Mac.
Talk to the characters in your uncle's house and pick an exhibit to enter.
Move through each world with the on-screen arrows and examine what you find.
Fight by clicking the part of an enemy you want to hit, and watch your health.
Pick up and combine items to solve each world's puzzles, then confront its master to lift that part of the curse.

Screenshots

Waxworks screenshot: behind a red curtain, a waxwork of Jack the Ripper raises his knife over a woman on a gaslit street

Waxworks screenshot: an Egyptian guard with a sword blocks a stone pyramid corridor above the inventory of items

Waxworks screenshot: a pale vampire with fangs bared stands between two crosses and lit candles

Waxworks screenshot: a man with a noose round his neck and rolled-back eyes, sentenced to hang for his ancestor's crimes

Tips

Save often and in more than one slot; death comes quickly.
Items do not carry over between exhibits, so use what you find in each world.
Read what people tell you: clues to the puzzles are often in the dialogue.
The London exhibit is mostly about puzzles, a change of pace if the fighting wears you down.

Questions

Is Waxworks scary?

It is a dungeon crawler, so it leans on grim settings and graphic death scenes more than on jump scares. Its gore was notorious in 1992 and is still strong.

Where can I buy Waxworks?

On GOG, for Windows and Mac.

Who made Waxworks?

Horror Soft, the studio behind the Elvira games, in 1992.

Is Waxworks related to Elvira?

It was made by the same studio, Horror Soft, on the same engine as the Elvira games, but its story is not connected to them.