TRIGGER WARNING: Corpse Party is an incredibly violent horror game with self-harm and violence toward children prominently featured. Please be aware of this before playing the game or looking at the images below.
If you’ve been into horror games for a while, you’ve probably heard of Corpse Party. The series has been around since the mid ‘90s and has been a staple of Japanese horror ever since. The games are so popular that they spawned several series of manga, an animated movie, and two live action movies as well as eight game releases. Some of the games are re-releases, but that just means the series has been refined over and over to horrific perfection.
Corpse Party for the Switch from Team GrisGris, Mages, and publisher XSeed is a remake of the original game, revised and updated. It was released originally as Corpse Party: Blood Covered – Repeated Fear, and this is the definitive version of the game. It tells the story of a group of Japanese school kids who are at their school late one night. One of their friends is moving away, so they decide to perform a old ritual one girl found online to ensure that they’ll always be together. One of their teachers is mysteriously still at school and somehow the school is unlocked and they can all get in, even Satoshi’s little sister (where are their parents??). It’s a sappy, saccharine introduction that feels like fluffy anime nonsense at first. But be patient, because the slightly overlong introduction conceals a wickedly disturbing plot that is some of the very best horror in video gaming.
Ruining the plot and cut scenes in Corpse Party would be an absolute crime because a lot of what makes the game so special is that it’s so much more powerful than you’d expect. The visuals look like they’re straight out of the SNES era (excluding cut scenes) and the dialogue is as full of Japanese anime high school tropes as you can get. But all that is designed to mislead you. One second you’re playing along, thinking everything is fine, and the next, things go horribly, violently wrong. Once Corpse Party gets going, it’s impossible to put it down, and you’ll blow through each of the five main chapters as the hair inevitably raises on your neck and you have trouble sleeping. No one is safe and with the multiple endings available in the game, everyone can die. In fact, it’s important to see as many of those endings as you can, since unlocking endings also unlocks the bonus content available in the game.
In addition to the five main chapters, there are a plethora of bonus chapters that add depth to the various characters of the game, unlocking one by one as you progress. In fact, this latest version of Corpse Party is over quadruple the size of the original game, adding the 14 chapters from the 3DS release of the title and another two more. You also get two new characters, Miku Shirayume and Ryoka Iwami, expanding the plot even further. The other new chapter expands the stories of Ayumi Shinozaki and Yoshiki Kishinuma, fan favorites of the series. Twenty-one chapters makes for a pretty long visual novel and honestly, the world of Corpse Party is so engaging that you will want to experience all that content!
As mentioned earlier, Corpse Party looks much like an SNES game. While the cinemas are pure AAA anime quality, the majority of the game is 16-bit and that’s pretty awesome. Some of the scenes are so intense that you probably wouldn’t want to see them in detailed high def anyway, but regardless, the convention works great and the game looks fantastic. You’d never know it was as old as it actually is. However, there is a bit of weirdness in the transition from the 3DS to the Switch. The 3DS version of the game featured gameplay on the top screen and all your items and other information on the bottom, a clean and uncluttered UI that worked extremely well. In the transition to the Switch, the UI was changed out of necessity to a single screen affair. While there’s no way around this, the choice of adding a border around the entire game which shows character portraits, hit points, and items in your inventory on screen. This makes sense since the game isn’t originally in widescreen, but it’s also a visual distraction that takes away from the original feel of the game and limits the sense of immersion somewhat. This means that your screen’s playable area is a lot smaller, not a big deal on a 55” TV, but if you’re using a Switch Lite for example, this might become a problem for some players.
It would have been great to be able to turn off the outer frame entirely and expand the screen, but that’s just not an option here. Odd, since you basically use items automatically anyway. On this version of Corpse Party, the timer is also visible prominently in the top left corner of the screen and button guides for the Switch controls also appear along the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, these can be turned off in the menu, streamlining the gameplay screen somewhat.
The sound in Corpse Party is excellent, first for the outstanding voice acting. While all in Japanese, the depth and range of the actors is apparent and this is the first time that the extra chapters have been fully voiced as well, a treat for veteran players and newbies alike. The music and sound effects are suitably gruesome and if you are playing in the dark with headphones or surround sound, you’re definitely going to be getting a bit uncomfortable. Corpse Party might not reach the sonic heights of the original Silent Hill trilogy but it’s certainly nearing that category!
At this point, let’s be clear for those of you that might not be paying attention. Corpse Party is absolutely and unequivocally not for children. This is an incredibly adult game with content that may trigger some players. It was even banned in China for being too violent and horrific (yes, really). Not everyone can handle this sort of thing and much like Doki Doki Literature Club (which we reviewed here), Corpse Party represents the apex of horror in the visual novel genre with shocking scenes, brutality, and some wild dialogue. That being said, it’s an absolute blast if you’re both a horror fan and a reader, but definitely don’t expect the gameplay to be action-based! This is primarily a mix of 16-bit RPG dungeon wandering and visual novel with some lighter (but absolutely deadly) gameplay mixed in. It’s a fantastic blend of multiple genres to produce something entirely unique and it’s even cooler that the original was created on RPG Maker of all things!
Corpse Party is many things: retro throwback, adult horror title, visual novel, trope-filled fun, and even high-quality anime. But the important thing is that the takes all those disparate components and mixes them into a game that is so good that it has been enduring and expanding for a quarter of a century now with no signs of stopping. The Switch version, even with some odd visual choices for the UI, is by far the definitive version of the game and is fantastic to play for long-time fans and recent devotees alike. Just don’t expect the game to be light and fluffy or you’re in for a rather rude awakening!
This review was based on a digital copy of Corpse Party provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was excellent in both! Corpse Party is also available for Playstation 4, PC, Xbox One, XSX, and PC on Steam. All screenshots are from actual gameplay. Spoilers have been purposely avoided.
