Three daughters, one castle, one night, and plenty of undead on your conscience. WaxWorks is magic and horror rolled into one package, if you believe that a medieval fortress packed with wax figures can become a gateway to hell.

It's a hybrid RPG and logic adventure from 1992, when the developers thought: why should players just stare at a map and get frustrated with random encounters when they could also get frustrated trying to figure out which spell combinations to cast? On screen you see your party — three differently specialized wizards: Magic User, Priest, and Ranger — whom you must guide through a locked dark dungeon. Each floor has its secrets, each has its horrors, and each wants to devour your group.

Gameplay revolves around taking turns, guessing the right combination of spells and items, and occasionally jumping into combat when nothing else will do. The catch is that you can't just buy components at the marketplace — you have to craft them, combine them, test them in practice. The controls are archaic, navigating in darkness feels like a blind person fumbling around in a morgue, but that very frustration of stumbling around is what makes discovering something new feel like a small victory. The game hates you, wants you to earn it.

WaxWorks was never a bestseller, and outside Britain it barely existed at all. The reason is obvious — it was different from everything else, didn't hold your hand, assumed you had both time and patience. By the 90s, players wanted shortcuts, atmospheric scraps, and assurance they'd get their money's worth. Not here. Quite the opposite: alternating waves of mood, where one moment you're bored in menus, the next your heart's pounding because you brought a character without magical protection into your party.

Try running it in DOSBox if you're in the mood for an old-school lesson in humility. It's not a game for kids, not a game for eager clickers — it's a game for those who remember the time when computers tried to be smart while we tried to be smarter than them.