Developer: Realcast Inc.
Publisher: Realcast Inc.
Platform: Meta Quest 3s, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, Meta Quest 2
Tested on Meta Quest 3
Hide The Corpse – Review
A murder has happened and you need to dispose of the body before anyone finds out. Hide The Corpse is a VR game about hiding the unfortunate victim of your murderous activity before the police get to you. With the trailer and the description, this game looks like a fun little game that may have some interesting elements for an entertaining experience. This VR game is for the moment only available on Meta Quest systems.
Story
In Hide the Corpse, there isn’t an actual story. Stages start with a little radio broadcast from the cops that they are coming to your location. That little radio broadcast does make it feel that there is some pressure to hide the body as fast as possible. It would be interesting if they added a little note or some more dialogue to explain what happened before, but it isn’t needed to make it a better game.
Sound
As a whole, the sound design is quite good. The little bit of voice acting was decent enough to sound convincing enough to pass as actual police radio chatter. Some sounds were also used as an indicator. For example, when you drag the body and start to hear a rubber being stretched; you know the body is stuck behind something. The same goes for the timer: when you hear that the cops are near your location then that means that time is running low. They did a good job of playing around with it. Music was also impactful. It has a fast beat and it keeps the tension high. The BGM was a good choice for the situation you are in in Hide The Corpse.
Graphics
The graphics in this game look quite cartoonish. They do try to give us the vibe of a funky-style room from the ’70s. The clothes on the corpse and the general props further add to this ’70s vibe. While the game will not win any awards for its visuals, it’s not uncommon for VR titles to look a bit rough around the edges. By choosing the cartoon style the developers do get away with a bit more, as even graphical inconsistencies would still look okay here.
Gameplay
Unsurprisingly, Hide the Corpse is a VR game about hiding the titular corpse. Upon booting the game, there’s a tutorial. The explanation is clear and you’ll get to grips with the main mechanics quite rapidly. Some elements are not explained, however. For example, if you want to progress, you need to utilize multiple hiding spots in one stage to unlock the next one.
After the tutorial, we start with the first room. At the start of each room, everything begins with a short audio dialogue about the cops getting to your location. That little cop call is a nice detail to keep the pressure up throughout the whole game. Our first reaction, when the timer started, was to hide the corpse in the closet in front of us. This was one of the places where many would try to hide the body first. We also tried the bathtub, couch, pool table, and so on. To find out where you can hide the body is fun, but some spots are tedious to get access to. To access some of the hiding spots, you’ll need to clear certain conditions. Some of these conditions require you to place the body in specific positions, which sometimes feels a bit tedious. It does feel realistic in a way, but sometimes the controls work against you.
Throughout the game, we notice that the hand position in the game is interesting. The moment we start to drag the body, the hands stay on the body and it starts to connect to us with some rubber-looking connection. These rubbery animations, in combination with a specific sound effect, were the only indicators that we were still dragging the body around. It is easy to lose grip on the body when you are not looking or trying to lift it into something like a bathtub, as the body is heavy.
Finally, after getting the body out of sight, it’s time to hide the evidence. The ‘hide the evidence’ sub-objective can be cleared more easily, as you can just open the toilet or a closet, throw everything in, and you are done. They could have made it so that the evidence needed to have separate hiding spots. When everything is gone, body and evidence, we need to get rid of the fingerprints. Fingerprints are easy to see as they are indicated as blue spots. Once they are gone, you can clear the level. Two cops are standing and inspecting the spot where you have hidden the body. You will get a score on how much evidence and fingerprints are disposed of and if the body is well hidden.
Conclusion
Hide the Corpse is an interesting puzzle game, but moments of frustration will certainly occur when the body does not cooperate. While the latter is realistic, sometimes it felt a bit unfair and clumsy to perform even rather simple actions. Of course, these minor inconveniences were only a small blemish on an otherwise fun experience. Even so, the most fun we had was when we replayed stages to try and beat the original score or find another hiding place. The 70s look and the music was decently executed, though the game still looked a bit rough around the edges.
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