Corpse Party is a simple story about a bunch of kids (and their teacher) who want to be friends forever, so they let their eccentric classmate perform a ritual she found on the Internet. The ritual turns out to be ghost bait, and the group ends up in the spectral remains of a rotting, abandoned elementary school, where some seriously messed up stuff went down a long time ago. Help them escape! Or, well, try to. Just, try not to step on the person-shaped puddle of viscera in the hallway.

If Corpse Party sounds familiar, that’s because XSEED first introduced us to the franchise in 2011. It was a sleeper hit on the PSP back then, when game localization was a lot messier than it is in the wild world of 2016. It was a horror game about children, on top of being a remake of an RPG Maker contest winner from the mid-90s. I know, right? It came seemingly out of nowhere, dazzled its intended niche and went on to produce several sequels, the most recent of which was a sadly broken mess on the Vita. But hey, with its audio gimmicks, brutal (implied) violence and ironic retro style, Corpse Party stood on its own and made an impact.

Now Corpse Party is on PC, and it’s…actually quite different from the PSP version! Explaining requires a bit more history. 2011’s PSP Corpse Party was, more accurately, a remake of a remake. The 90s RPG Maker game was touched up by the original creator (operating at that point as Team GrisGris) in Japan as Corpse Party Blood Covered. The PSP version was created after 5pb got a hold of the rights (turning Corpse Party into a multimedia franchise along the way) in the form of…Corpse Party Blood Covered:… Repeated Fear. Phew. 

So, this new release is actually a step back, chronologically speaking, from the PSP release. For folks already in the know, this means a couple things. Different voice acting, slightly different visuals and some small variations in the script. XSEED largely carried over its original localization, but made a few changes here and there, interestingly enough sometimes due to a change of line delivery. In terms of major content differences, the PC version has a few extra scenes not found in the PSP release, and a feature the PSP version sorely lacked: skipping.

Skipping is important because Corpse Party, like many lower-budget Japanese games, is laced with visual novel DNA. In fact, while the pixelated, tile-based RPG Maker style might make it resemble an adventure game, most of Corpse Party is about finding the next way to trigger plot points rather than solving puzzles. The meat of the game is the experience you get going through the story, and the potatoes are all the truly horrifying bad endings you’ll stumble into along the way.

Skipping is important because those bad endings set you back. Sometimes way back. Getting all the endings in the PSP version was often a slog, and failing to get the good endings could be so arduous in the later chapters that many of the genuine scares would start to lose luster. Here, getting through the rough patches is much less of an issue.

Corpse Party on PC really only shows its age in one regard. Along with the stuff that isn’t in the PSP version, the PSP version has something that isn’t in the PC version: CGs. Some of the more striking moments early on used great CG stills to really make a lasting impact on the player, gearing them up for all the scares to come, even if they sort of go away towards the end. This was clever, because the game might have been a tougher sell without them, but they aren’t used in a way that overshadows the real scary parts.

Those real scary parts not only don’t use CGs, but they also forgo any visual elements whatsoever. Corpse Party is at its horror best when it takes away everything but the sound and text, and uses that disorientation along with a “binaural” effect with the audio (use headphones!) to scare the bejeezus out of you. These moments are in place in both versions of Corpse Party, and the game is just as effective in its earlier form, but those CGs added some punctuation to the big moments, and even boosted many smaller ones.

Either way, horror junkies will get a lot out of Corpse Party. A 3DS version is also on the way, with a new set of small but notable differences. Vita might have the edge over the others, as that nets access to the whole series in one place, but no matter what platform it’s on, Corpse Party is a strange, but significant, indie horror gem that has taken quite a journey over the last twenty years. Try it out!

Hint: Sometimes, you might be stuck, in one room even. Just examine everything in sight over and over again. The game wants you to panic, and doing so just might be the next trigger.

Lucas White