Corpse Party is that rare type of game that manages to succeed and fail on a large scale, sometimes simultaneously. In the category of "first impressions," we immediately warmed to the retro, RPG feel. There's a blend of animated cut-scenes with overlay text and talking heads to tell the copious story. From all outward appearances, wandering through the world of Corpse Party might as well be a game pulled directly from 1985. Sprite-based and gloriously 2D, Corpse Party aims for the core RPG gamer in many ways. Aside from the storyline and character development, one might as well be playing a dungeon crawler set in the distant past or future. The fact that Corpse Party has a contemporary setting is a nice surprise; you feel like you're reading grown-up manga rather than playing yet another RPG retread. The visual devices used to lend the game its horror elements are surprisingly effective. Surprising, because it may seem hard to develop much anxiety in a player using 2D, but the people who would make this argument obviously didn't grow up with text-based adventures. If Zork and its ilk managed to be scary, why should 2D be any big hurdle? In terms of visual storytelling, interesting backdrop, and audio, Corpse Party makes good on its promise to players.

Things continue to shine in the script portion of the Corpse Party story. Let's face it: A "choose your own adventure" style of game just isn't that technically difficult to produce. We were doing as much with BASIC programs back when this genre was barely alive. The impressive thing is making players feel emotionally attached to choices, and to characters. It's a high bar, no matter what the game genre, and Corpse Party meets it. The story begins as a group of older students (middle-school or high-school equivalent) are gathered together telling ghost stories. Imagine one of those stories about the place you're hanging out in once being the site of a gruesome crime... This segment simulates a campfire creep-out session remarkably well, but then something catastrophic happens and the students find themselves in a where and when exactly like the campfire ghost story they were just experiencing!

Escape being the primary goal, Corpse Party plays out as a mix of retro-RPG and survival horror. Compared to a real-time RPG, there is very little interaction or "fighting" enemies. The choices you make are generally more important than how quickly you can make them, and the segments that revolve around action feel clunky, as if to remind you of your limitations. It's not unusual to reach a dead end that requires you to reload a save-point, something you don't generally see with a RPG, but commonly find in survival horror games. Throughout the experience, you do a lot of reading. There's no lack of mature content, so don't think for a minute this is a game your tween boys or girls should be playing. Adults looking for something different than sword-swinging, gun-toting action games will find Corpse Party a unique experience, albeit with limitations in terms of game mechanics and difficulty.

The narrative from here on gets a bit sad, unfortunately. Corpse Party trades off significantly in terms of its level of difficulty, trying to achieve a dramatic effect on players. Those dead-ends mentioned earlier are one thing, but repetitive elements in games need to serve a purpose and be used sparingly. Too many of the encounters in Corpse Party have the feeling of a trap, which is appropriate for the characters, considering their situation. Should playing a trapped, desperate character bring out the same emotions in the player? How long will a player endure this before giving up and moving to something more rewarding? It likely depends on one's definition of reward. If you're turned on by challenges that feel unbalanced, where the game seems stacked against you, and where you never feel your characters have the upper hand, Corpse Party is going to knock your socks off. We've enjoyed our share of survival horror games, but we found the experience here too stifling. Perhaps because of a limited save-game feature, and because of lengthy scripted sequences that one is forced to replay in their entirety. The time investment becomes an issue, but there's also the problem with reward. Even in the most glaring crises, we need something that feels like hope. A healing item, a gun with bullets, a companion, however token... anything that helps ease the tension. Corpse Party does perhaps too good a job of creating a mood of desperation that bleeds over into how it feels to play the game. A good comparison might be Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which we found grating for the same reasons. Considering the success of Amnesia, there does appear to be a sub-genre of gamers who prefer handicapped, trial-and-error gameplay over godlike status. If Corpse Party can find that audience, it will likely succeed.

Most everything about the controls are standard fare for old-school RPG fans. Movement around the game world is easily managed with the analog controls, in addition to pushing a button when you want to interact with objects and other characters, or advance dialogue. That's about as complicated as life gets during a session of Corpse Party, especially since there isn't a reliance on inventory other than during scripted sequences. The focus here is on storytelling. The most common action you'll take during the game is button-pressing your way through talky scenes with other characters, as this multi-chapter game plays through. Because there are branching plotlines based on your choices in the game, not every player will have exactly the same experience, but there's basically a fixed overall path that all players travel. This makes the replay value relatively low.

If you like to be surprised, don't do too much research on Corpse Party, or you'll spoil the game's quirky puzzles. Much like an old-school arcade game with unforgiving difficulty, Corpse Party pulls no punches, and repeating the same sequence over and over again to try and find the right combination of moves or actions won't be universally popular. The type of person we predict will enjoy Corpse Party most is the gamer too retro to get into new-fangled survival horror, who wants to recreate the creep-factor of early classics like Parasite Eve and Capcom horror games from the '90s. The 2D presentation also makes Corpse Party a candidate for cult status among fans of old party-based dungeon-crawlers, but this game has more in common with Resident Evil than Final Fantasy. There's no doubt that manga and anime fans will enjoy the game; they prove regularly that they will happily jump through any hoop - no matter how technically awkward or logically infeasible - to experience any esoteric slice of Japanese subculture. If you happen to fall into one of these groups, Corpse Party is worth a look, but we can't see it gaining broader success beyond its niche.