Developed By: Phosphor Games
Published By: Phosphor Games
Release Date: August 25th, 2015
System: PC
Corpse of Discovery opens up by displaying “Our Feature Presentation” across the screen leading into a live action interview with what appears to be a high ranking individual associated with the “Corps of Discovery”. The interview reveals that communication with one of the astronauts has been lost and that no further information is available. You shift to an astronaut waking up in an empty space station with a prerecorded voice narrating your final mission.
There are several objects you can interact with on your way to the computer room such as funny videos on laptops, several pictures, and a very touching message from your family. When you finally reach the computer, a hologram of the planet you are on appears. You are also given the parameters of the mission you are to complete while on this planet. After putting on your top of the line space suit, you step out on to a barren red planet. The sun is harsh and is your only enemy on this unexplored planet.
After the initial awe of walking in space wears off, you come across a floating robot ball that helps you and gives you updates from the human resources department of the corps. She also gives you tips about the environment and the dangerous radiation levels. Your mission is to mark the planet so that it can be accurately mapped. There is nothing else to do while running to your objective other than listen to yourself breathe and to the robot remind you how proud your family will be and that she has not been able to send the distress signal since you crashed.
Shortly after reaching the last marker, the little robot’s batteries die and she shuts down. This is the most exciting thing that has happened thus far. With her dying words, she assures you that your family will be compensated and that you are stranded on this planet. You will now have one more objective to reach. Once you reach this final destination, and alien squid thing comes and blasts you with radiation causing you to black out. Once you regain consciousness you are back in the space station listening to the same recording telling you about your final mission. Déjà vu.
This is pretty much the entire game. Each time you pass out and wake up you find yourself on a different planet. With each black out you find new messages from your wife and kids and suggestions that time has passed even though it feels like you are just hitting rewind. The second planet you find yourself on, is full of lush vegetation and the occasional creature. Completely different than the wasteland you were on before. Other planets you visit have caves, mountains, floating rocks, lava, and deserts.
There is a profound lack of stuff to do in this game. Every mission is essentially the same, “walk over there, do an action, repeat forever.” As the game progresses it evolves from a mystery to deep theological choice of religion before become completely satirical. As the player, you start to think that maybe you character is going mad but the game never really makes that clear. Your robot friend starts to develop more of a personality as you progress. She starts swearing and mocking you for doing the same things over and over.
It feels that the developers gave up on telling a story and instead decided to make the game more comical, which completely clashes with dark and depressing setting that was put forth in the beginning of the game. The serious cinematic tone is upheld to a point in the first half of the game, but ends up sabotaging itself in the second half which effectively ruins what otherwise would have been a gorgeous experience. With only about 3 hours of play time, it will be hard to recommend this game sci-fi fans, let alone to everyone else. With a few tweaks and more cohesive story it could make for a passable game. However, as it stands now I would let this one drift into oblivion.
