Corpse Party

An entry by Fan Xiong

Introduction

Corpse Party is a Japanese survival horror visual novel developed by Team GrisGris and published by 5pb. and XSEED Games. Originally created in 1996 using RPG Maker, the game has been remade numerous times and released on multiple platforms, including Windows PC, PSP, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. The 2008 remake, Corpse Party: Blood Covered, and the 2021 enhanced edition brought the series to an international audience while retaining its retro 2D art style and gripping storyline. The game takes place in the haunted ruins of Tenjin Elementary School, where a group of high school students, after performing a seemingly harmless ritual known as "Sachiko Ever After," are transported to a nightmarish alternate dimension filled with vengeful spirits and curses. To survive, players must explore dark corridors, solve puzzles, and uncover the truth about the school's tragic past. Combining the innocence of pixel art with gory horror and psychological suspense, Corpse Party delves into profound themes of friendship, guilt, trauma, and the cycle of violence, making it one of the most distinctive and emotionally impactful works in the history of Japanese horror games

Autoethnographic component

Playing "Corpse Party" is not merely an experience of fear; it's more like a journey about empathy and memory. At first, I thought I would encounter the typical kind of scares and ghost chases. But what greeted me at the start was silence. For instance, the blanks between screams, the echoing footsteps in empty classrooms and corridors, and the torn pieces of paper. In this atmosphere, these elements are more unsettling than any monster. In these moments, I could almost feel the loneliness of the characters and the weight of their memories, as if walking through the trauma of others.

The scene that I still can't forget is that classroom filled with the remains of the ghosts. The messages left by those children who were waiting for rescue were not meant to scare, but to evoke sadness. Each "wrong ending" was not like a game failure, but more like losing a certain emotional connection - like a memory being forgotten. The horror in the game is not entirely about bloodshed and death but lies in making us realize that our tiny choices can lead to irreversible losses, thus making us afraid to move forward and afraid of losing.

This game holds great significance for me because it transforms "horror" into "reflection". It enables me to perceive that ghosts are not merely the deceased, but also the lingering memories in our hearts - remorse, concern, and unfinished stories. Through the pixelated world, "Corpse Party" reminds me that empathy is the core of this horror game, and perhaps the most terrifying thing is those things that we try to forget but still remember.

Themes and Connections to Scholarship

The Cursed School: Corrupting the Everyday

Corpse Party reconfigures the symbolic space of the elementary school—a site traditionally associated with innocence and childhood—into one that embodies corruption and terror, exemplifying a prevalent motif in Japanese horror. As Balmain (2006) observes, a defining feature of Japanese horror is the estrangement of familiar environments, transforming the mundane aspects of daily life into sources of dread. Within Tenjin Elementary School, each classroom functions as a memorial to lost lives and tragic histories; objects such as chalk and desks, once symbols of education and order, now serve as relics of absence and sorrow. From an interpretive standpoint, this spatial inversion metaphorically reflects broader societal anxieties in Japan regarding social isolation and the erosion of communal bonds. Furthermore, the game’s overhead perspective intensifies the player’s sense of entrapment, sitting them within a school environment that operates not only as a physical setting but also as a representation of psychological confinement

Violence, Memory, and Repetition

The repetitive narrative structure of the game reflects McRoy's (2005) understanding of "traumatic memory reenactment": the recurring deaths and retributions in post-war Japanese horror represent the symbolic manifestation of national psychological trauma. "Sachiko Ever After" originally symbolized a ritual of friendship, but it repeatedly awakens old violence and continuously plunges new victims into a cycle of grief. The chapter-based narrative in the game corresponds to the concept of "traumatic reenactment" in psychology - trauma cannot be sealed but can only be reenacted again and again, and each reenactment intensifies the degree of trauma. "Corpse Party" transforms this "re-enactment" into a "memorial action": every failure and restart is a commemoration of the deceased.

Sound, Silence, and the Psychology of Fear

Sound plays a pivotal role in Japanese horror, a point further underscored by Ito (2017) in his analysis of its narrative function. In Corpse Party, for instance, the sense of terror does not rely solely on visual shocks but is often achieved through nuanced auditory design, the faint creaking of floorboards, distant weeping, or an abrupt lapse into silence. Frequently, what proves most unsettling is not the scream itself, but the silence that ensues. This sudden shift from sound to silence mirrors the rhythm of the player’s own heartbeat, allowing fear to manifest tangibly within the body. From a phenomenological perspective, such silence acts as a “sensory void,” compelling players to actively construct their own dread in the act of waiting.

Cute and Macabre: The Aesthetics of Contrast

Yuka Mochida. She is also Satoshi Mochida's younger sister.

"Corpse Party" vividly embodies what Spooner (2021) terms " cute horror"—a theory describing the emotional tension arising from the juxtaposition of cuteness and visceral violence. This striking contrast lies at the heart of the game's design: the characters are portrayed in an innocent, pixelated style, yet they undergo extreme suffering. Such visual and emotional dissonance generates what can be described as an "emotional imbalance," compelling players to oscillate between empathy and revulsion. Rooted in Japan's pervasive "culture of cuteness," the game repurposes this aesthetic into a vehicle for conveying pain. As Allison (2006) observes, in contemporary Japanese culture, the "lovely" or "cute" (kawaii) is often commodified into an emotional experience—one where even sorrow can be transformed into a form of pleasure. In a similar manner, "Corpse Party" transmutes horror into an almost aesthetic sensation, evoking what might be called a "fragile beauty," making terror itself a sensuous and strangely captivating encounter.

Transmedia Storytelling and Convergence Culture

"Corpse Party" franchise exemplifies what Jenkins (2008) describes as "convergence culture," in which narratives unfold across multiple media platforms and communities, giving rise to a form of "participatory memory." Through its adaptations into manga, anime, novels, and live-action films, the same traumatic story is continuously retold in varied aesthetic forms. As fans reinterpret and circulate these versions, the narrative sustains its presence at a cultural level. Intriguingly, this cyclical mode of transmission mirrors the very logic of the game itself: memory persists through repetition and sharing. The global resonance of the series stems not only from its effective portrayal of horror, but more profoundly from its emotional core—the interplay of guilt, shame, and tenderness characteristic of Japanese horror. It is this nuanced emotional landscape that enables the work to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Some other works by Corpse Party
Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient
Corpse Party (Manga)
Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (OVA)
Corpse Party (Live Action Movie)

Synthesis

In summary, upon deeper reflection of Corpse Party, it becomes evident that the game is more than a conventional horror experience—it is a cultural text deeply engaged with the question of how society remembers pain. It gives tangible form to the emotional labor of mourning and the ethics of empathy. Through its use of cyclical trauma and the deliberate juxtaposition of the cute and the macabre, the game redefines ways of expressing grief within digital media. Players become both participants and witnesses, haunted not only by ghosts but by memory itself. In the end, Corpse Party transcends the “survival horror” genre to function as a kind of memorial ritual—transforming horror into a bridge between the living and the forgotten. Perhaps this is the charm that horror games can offer.

Video

Corpse Party (2021) - Launch Trailer

Corpse Party (2021) game walkthrough YouTube

Works Cited

Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. University of California Press, 2006.

Balmain, Colette. Introduction to Japanese Horror Film. Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Ito, Kayo. “Horror and Sound in Japanese Indie Games.” Game Studies Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, 2017.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press, 2008.

McRoy, Jay. Japanese Horror Cinema. University of Hawaii Press, 2005.

Spooner, Catherine. “Pixelated Fear: Corpse Party and the Aesthetics of Cute Horror.” Games and Culture, vol. 16, no. 5, 2021, pp. 523–540.

“Corpse Party Review.” IGN, 24 Oct. 2016, https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/10/24/corpse-party-review.

XSEEDgames. Corpse Party (2021 Edition) Official Playlist. YouTube, 1 Nov. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BSPoPaYkwY&t=1s

Converting Minds. “Corpse Party Full Gameplay – No Commentary.” YouTube, 25 Oct. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0ynvt6Yl4waAeI-WJjL7KGazsSq91epv

AI Disclosure & Appendix

AI is only used to verify the format of cited references.