REVIEW : Corpse Party (2021) (PC)
Corpse Party was first launched in Japan in 1996 for the PC-9801 and was later remade and released for Windows ten years later as Corpse Party: Blood Covered. The game was reworked as Corpse Party: Blood Covered… Repeated Fear was first released in North America on the PSP in 2011, and this is the version we got. In 2016, it was also released on the Nintendo 3DS as Corpse Party, and it is now available for all major systems save the PlayStation 5.
Book of Shadows, Sweet Sachiko’s Hysteric Birthday Bash, and Blood Drive are all direct tale sequels available on Steam, as well as Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, an episodic sequel that begins a new storey arc. This 2021 release, on the other hand, is the original, most-loved version.
And this OG is a peculiar little title, and I’d characterise it as a cross between a Super Nintendo-style JRPG and a PS1-era survival horror game. It has lovely 16-bit pixel images and a top-down perspective that should appeal to anyone who still considers Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and A Link to the Past to be the pinnacle of pleasant visual aesthetics. However, there is no levelling up or battle in Corpse Party. Long dialogue passages are interspersed with exploring a ghostly school, searching for artefacts, and completing easy riddles.
Multiple endings are also a part of the visual novel storytelling in Corpse Party. Making multiple options and learning all of the different endings for each chapter is a big part of the excitement of playing Corpse Party.
Corpse Party mainly relies on its narrative to push this out-of-the-box gameplay strategy, and it’s a fantastic one. Without giving anything away beyond the first chapter, a group of seven high school students are at their school at 7 p.m., telling ghost stories, when one of their teachers and one of their younger sisters appear.
I suppose it’s because of Japan? One of the seven pupils is set to leave town, so the remaining nine participate in a ceremony where they rip a paper charm into nine pieces, symbolising their eternal bond. A big earthquake occurs before they can escape, and the kids are separated and placed in a rundown elementary school that is not their high school.
A Slow Start to a Memorable Tale
This storey is told considerably better through a combination of gameplay and cutscenes than it was during the storey dump. The storey takes a bit to get started. While the long speech segment that opened the game was well scripted, it didn’t do anything to pique my interest. This setup didn’t pique my interest. However, once the game started, I was all in.
Corpse Party succeeds in creating unforgettable moments as part of its storytelling. Hair is piled high in the cupboards, buckets of pee and decaying meat fill the halls, gory warnings are scrawled on the walls, and newspaper cuttings detailing children’s tragic endings litter the floor. Most of the game consists of clicking on everything intriguing in the environment, yet the landscape is so fascinating that you’ll want to click on everything. Even the flavour text is enjoyable.
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