Hide the Corpse is the oddest puzzle game you’ll ever experience.
There I found myself, alone in a diner with the body of a man I’ve never encountered. Before I could gather my thoughts, I overheard the police on the scanner reporting a murder had been reported and they would arrive at the diner in 4 minutes. Panic ensued.
In no time, the body was concealed in a place I hoped would remain undiscovered. With mere seconds to spare, I wiped away my fingerprints, hid the deceased man’s possessions, and cautiously opened the door to face two officers with their weapons aimed at me.
Just 30 seconds later, I was declared innocent and free to continue on my way. However, I realized that concealing this guy’s corpse was far more entertaining than I expected, and evidently, the universe was granting me an endless opportunity to replay this situation. It was reminiscent of the film Groundhog Day mixed with a touch of Weekend at Bernie’s for added flair.
If you hadn’t already figured it out, the game is titled Hide the Corpse, and it can be found on the Meta Quest platform for only $15. It offers several hours of dark comedic enjoyment, and PSVR 2 players will soon be able to join the excitement on August 18 when it debuts on the PlayStation Store.
A puzzle game unlike any other
Hide the Corpse is essentially an intricate variation of reverse hide-and-seek. The game features over half a dozen levels, each providing at least six distinct locations to hide the mystery man’s corpse, named Gus.
Contrary to what the theme might suggest, Hide the Corpse is an oddly family-friendly title with no profanities, no violence (aside from moving a corpse, I suppose), and little that would trigger you to conceal its presence from your children.
This naturally meant that my son and I spent countless hours laughing until we could hardly breathe as we tried to maneuver Gus’s incredibly heavy corpse without colliding with the furniture in our actual living room. Truly, it’s a delightfully amusing experience that is guaranteed to make you chuckle.
Dragging Gus around is completely physics-based, and since he’s supposed to represent the weight of an average adult, maneuvering him proves quite difficult. This challenge is compounded by the fact that you only have four minutes to somehow transport him to a suitable hiding place and stuff him into whatever dimensions that spot permits.
The introductory level occurs in an apartment where you can conceal Gus in bizarrely obvious locations such as the bathtub, the wardrobe, beneath the bed, and three more spots I won’t spoil. You might think the cops would discover him in these locations, but thankfully, they’re not exactly Sherlock Holmes.
The objective is simply to keep Gus’s corpse out of sight, a task that becomes increasingly ridiculous as you advance through the levels. And I assure you, you never truly comprehend how heavy a corpse can be in zero gravity until you reach the space level!
Gus isn’t the sole item you need to hide, however. The man inexplicably has numerous personal effects scattered throughout each level, including his comb, wallet, favorite record (this is 70s themed), driver’s license, and several other trinkets. All of these also need to be kept from view to achieve the highest score.
Oh, and make sure to eliminate every single one of the fingerprints you left behind. Seriously, those little blue fingerprints show up on anything you’ve touched, even if you were unaware you had touched it. It’s an almost overwhelming amount of tasks to complete in merely four minutes, but it results in rewarding gameplay within a brief period.
When the time is depleted, be it at the four-minute cutoff or when you open the door for the police, you’ll receive a rating on your performance. I’m uncertain who evaluates someone on their corpse-hiding capabilities, but I hope I never encounter them in reality.
Once you discover ample hiding spots within each level, you’ll unlock additional levels to explore. The scenarios are exceptionally diverse, ranging from the apartment where you start to the diner mentioned earlier, a zero-gravity space station, an art museum, and more. The latest update in mid-July introduced a plethora of new modifiers, including a heftier Gus and the option to double the hiding time.
Solo or with friends, it’s a blast
Though it’s a single-player game, I found it most enjoyable when streaming the gameplay to a TV while others in the room watched. This consistently prompted people to want to take a turn, leading to multiple sessions in the game until someone finally wrested the headset from their cold, not-dead hands. Definitely not dead. That only happens in the game.
It’s the kind of quirky, whimsical, and distinctive fun that I appreciate from indie developers, serving as a nostalgic reminder of the late 90s and early 2000s gaming era, where almost
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