Corpse Party: Book Of Shadows Review – Is Salvation Just A Choice Away?

Monday, May 5, 2025

Genre – Horror, Adventure Game Play Time – 20 hours Developer - MAGES. & Team Gris Gris Steam VNDB

Can Fate Be Changed?

Making a squeal to a horror game is never an easy task since if it deviates too far from what made the original terrifying then the audience may feel disconnected from it. Book of Shadows’ answer to this problem is to firmly bury itself within the Blood Covered’s setting and time-frame in order to tell a set of different stories using the same material. Trading out the sprite based visuals for one much closer to the style of the CGs and a movement system much more akin to a dungeon crawler are both changes made to help it stand out from the original while still being able to incorporate its core identity. A certain glee can be felt from the game when it presents the player with hope and new possibilities only to crush them in inventive ways. The most notable departure from the first game is in its focus on the previously minor cast members who often died off screen and giving them the proper time to shine rather than being glorified set dressing. Relying so much on Blood Covered comes with the draw backs of not really pushing the greater narrative forwards until the very end and having few interesting mechanics to call its own. Is this over reliance on the original enough to undermine its own achievements? Let’s avoid those bad endings and find out.

Cyclical Horror – Narrative and Themes

Sticking so close to the original’s material allows Book of Shadows to play on the familiar and known aspects of the world in ways which add to the player’s appreciation of it. In particular it loves to take a section of the story that the player thinks they know and expand upon it to reveal there was more going on then they realised in an episodic fashion. The chaotic myriad of other people who were drawn in by the Sachiko Ever After ritual, only glimpsed before, are given the space to showcase their tragedies and how their stories intersected with the main cast’s own journey. It does a good job of highlighting the magnitude of the suffering which occurred and how lucky the people who escaped were in the face of this ever-changing labyrinth of death traps. As a whole the game loves to play with the player through giving them hope before cruelly snatching it away just when it seems to be within grasp. This happens multiple times across the play time while being spaced out enough to convince you that maybe this time will be different. Of course it never is, the end of this tale has already been written and witnessed in the original so it is folly to think otherwise, but Book of Shadows does a masterful job of luring the player along with the promise of a happy ending despite everything pointing in the opposite direction. By fully embracing the bleak nature of the setting it can layer on the atmosphere and create an experience which captures best parts of early to mid game of Blood Covered. Everything is dangerous and the characters are confused and scared in the face of this monstrous place, it is here the horror in Corpse Party games is at its strongest and Book of Shadows fully capitalises on this at every turn. This is why the false hope and focus on previously minor cast members are so important, the player must have the ability to put themselves in the characters head space rather than distancing their feelings from people they know the fates of.

Pulling out hair from your throat might be a bad sign

Relying so heavily on Blood Covered comes with the problem of Book of Shadows feeling as if it does not meaningfully advance the narrative. It spends the majority of its play time expanding on what has already been established but not in a way which points to anything substantial for the future of the series as it just clarifies events which have already reached their conclusion. The final section of the game does try to set up for a squeal with a new story set after the events of the original, but its execution is a bit messy. This manifests as a general lack of confidence in its own material and the game’s systems not having the same impact they did in the school. Perhaps the best example of this narrative issue is the over the top cliffhanger which is so contrived and overly violent that it moves into being almost comic. There have been plenty of violent scenes before this point but the bright lights and visual clarity highlight how silly it is. There is a reason the school is so dark and it is to blur the unflattering lines of the horror fantasy since the genre sits closer to comedy when all is clear to see, horror is only scary because there is some level of the unknown to it. As for the mechanics, this chapter is set in what is essentially a haunted house, but it is not very big and only consists of a few rooms. What this does is remove much of the freedom and exploration offered before and it makes for a very linear flow. As a result it brings all of the minor issues with the system to the front since there is nothing to distract from it. Overall it is a weak note to end what is otherwise a strong horror experience.

Getting A Turn In The Spotlight – Characters

When it comes to the cast there is the continued focus on expanding on established ideas. There are not truly any new characters with those who seem to be new at first glance having actually appeared as corpses in the original. Their fates have already been written and a player who remembers these details will be rewarded with a sense of the tragedy to come. Each one is given enough space to provide a rounded presentation of themselves so the player has a good sense of what makes them tick. In terms of their role within the narrative, there is a great deal of variation as some get to be major characters in their chapter while others serve the role of sacrificial lambs to the slaughter and it is often hard to tell which they are when they are first introduced. By spreading out the importance of these characters the game can keep the player on the edge of their seat as to how long they have left which it can play with to create a sort of suspension bridge effect to foster an emotional attachment to the characters. As for the returning cast they are still the same entertaining and clashing personalities as before and since they are already established the focus can instead be put on new interactions and exciting situations. There is a brand of what if fiction to the characters’ choices and these new stories are given a feeling of wandering off into unknown territory. While they cannot go too far off the beaten track, each character gets enough new material to satisfy fans and make them a relevant part of the narrative despite their stories having already reached their conclusion.

It is nice to see more of the cast before the terrible events happen

Intimate Terror – Visual, Audio and Technical

When it comes to presentation there is a move away from the pixel art of the original title and into a style more in line with that game’s CGs. This is done to accommodate the change in gameplay from an RPG into a point and click adventure game. As such the player needs a static and clearly presented world to interact with in order to be able to reasonably understand what they are able to use within the space and what reactions they might be able expect. The result is a direct visual style where the first person perspective makes the horrors personal and intimate as it is offered up in a vivid detail not possible before. A corpse on the floor is no longer a jumble of pixels symbolising its horrific nature and it is instead the rotting remains of what was once a person which represents the fate awaiting those trapped here. In terms of audio Book of Shadows inherits the tool set of its predecessor but utilises it in a slightly different manner. Rather than being something to highlight key moments and actions, it instead focuses on creating a general ambiance where everything makes some kind of unsettling sound in order to sell the hostility of the environment. Promoting the school itself has a living and antagonistic entity underpins a lot of the presentational choices since it still holds an unknown threat to it which the ghosts no longer possess and it allows the game to capture the same fear as the original.

The sprites on the movement screen is a fun nod to the first game

On the mechanical front this is a fairly standard point and click adventure game with a normal inventory system and movement. However, there are several strange design choices which are worth talking about in the form of the sanity system and how the player unlocks the final chapter. Introduced in the first chapter, the sanity system represents how much the school’s influence has infected the playable character. This is a system at its best during that opening chapter where as the character’s sanity drops their behaviour begins to change and their interactions become more wild, violent and unpredictable. Unfortunately this is the only real time the sanity system has any real effect on the game and from then onwards it is just a health system which gives you are a game over if it maxes out and nothing else. It is such an odd choice to build up the importance of the sanity system in the first chapter only to throw it out of the window instantly and it leaves a disappointing aftertaste when the player realises this fact. When it comes to unlocking the final chapter the developers decided that the player must either have save data from Blood Covered or they have to complete every single bad ending the game. As good as the various bad endings in Book of Shadows are, they are not something the player should be forced to complete like a checklist and it takes all the mystique and terror out of them. There are also quite a lot of them so the process is long and repetitive since if the player has just been completing the chapters normally then they will likely only have a handful. A horror game should never devolve into data entry as there is nothing less scary than busy work.

Conclusion

Expansion is at the core of Book of Shadows’ identity as it adds more layers to Blood Covered’s narrative and setting from a new and exciting angle. It loves to give the player hope and snatch it away as cruelly as possible while it showcases the various minor characters who have been snared into the deathtrap. Moving away from a sprite based RPG into a CG based point and click adventure style allows for a more direct and personal presentation of the horror where the school itself feels more antagonistic than before. By mixing in familiar faces, the narrative can reveal new sides to them while still making them consistent with what was established in the original in order to create a more well rounded experience. Despite some issues with it not pushing the overall story forwards and some odd gameplay design choices, Book of Shadows stands out as an example of how a horror sequel can be recapture the magic of the original title.

Verdict –

Builds upon what made the first game a strong horror experience to create a well rounded and expanded version of that terror with new angles on familiar characters and ideas. It does slip up a bit when it comes to progressing the overall plot and has a few odd design choices.

Pros -

+ Gives the player just enough hope for the moments of despair to hit all the harder and mixes it in with a good dose of the familiar to undermine expectations.

+ New life is provided to existing major characters and new and minor cast members get their time to shine while selling the horror of what is happening to them.

+ Perfectly transitions from sprites to CGs and manages to capture new angles on the established horror of the school.