Japanese horror game Corpse Party pleased (and creeped out) a lot of Americans when it came out for PSP last fall—the morbid, horrifying adventure game is also surprisingly delightful.
So it's great news to hear that publisher XSEED Games is also localizing the sequel, to be digitally released for PSP this winter. Perhaps this is one of the announcements XSEED teased at E3 this year?
Here's XSEED's Tom Lipschultz on the game:
…Ah, Corpse Party: Book of Shadows. I've been translating that game for the last couple months, and I have to say, it is one hell of a sequel. It's divided into eight chapters, each of which tells its own self-contained short story. Some of them help fill in the blanks of what happened during crucial off-camera scenes from the original game. Others go into the back-story of various characters, helping to flesh them out and make their roles in the series mythos a bit clearer. Still others ask "what if?," presenting an alternate version of events from the first game in which characters who previously died are kept alive and given a fleeting chance to stay that way. And the game's wonderfully-titled final chapter, "Blood Drive," serves as a true sequel, focusing on two of the first game's survivors as they venture somewhere even deadlier than Heavenly Host Elementary School in order to dig up some answers.
The whole game is presented in a first-person point-and-click adventure game style, and is much heavier on dialogue- and narrative-driven cutscenes than its predecessor (even venturing into visual novel territory at times). The spooky atmosphere is as thick as ever, though, and the gameplay is aided by fast-forward and message log features, as well as the ability to open the menu and save at absolutely any time (even during cutscenes).
Fans of the first game are virtually guaranteed to love Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, and fans of survival horror and horror fiction in general (especially Japanese horror) who haven't already given this series a try are strongly encouraged to do so, since it really is among the best at what it does.
On top of that, Corpse Party will be on sale for $10 from tomorrow until November 6. Creepy stuff.