TL;DR: For those who search for an arcade rail shooter in the vein of House Of The Dead, this is the game for you. The only downsides are a bug where you have to aim in a very specific way to hit enemies at the edge of the screen and an underwhelming final boss, but for 1 buck, these flaws are more than acceptable.
Project Corpse from Echo7Project is a homage to the old lightgun and rail shooters, but mainly to House Of The Dead, at least from what I heard.
Growing up in the 2000s in Germany, there weren't many Arcades around, so I can only go by what I have seen on YouTube so far, but the influence of House Of The Dead is apparent.
Both are rail shooters that play in a cliche budget horror movie setting, offer multiple paths to the end, and saving civilians for items is a thing in both games.
But I getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. We play a police officer in the fictional town/county of Lynch Creek, which responds to a 911 call in the woods next to a graveyard and mansion.
Of course, the 911 call turns out to be an attack of the undead, and so the officer ventures into the woods to find out the source of the zombie apocalypse. Why he doesn't radio for backup instead of dealing with the outbreak alone is a mystery to me, but hey, Murica and so, I guess.
That's all that you get on story, really, just like the old rail shooters did back in the day.
And like the old rail shooters, the controls of Project Corpse are very simple: you control the crosshair with your mouse, you fire with the left mouse button, reload with the right, take cover with the middle mouse button, and use items with the spacebar.
As simple as the controls is the gameplay: the camera moves automatically from encounter to encounter. Clear one screen from enemies and you get to go to the next encounter. This goes on till you either lose all your health, aka HP (from which you have 8), or you beat the game. Of course, you get points for all kills, but there is sadly no high score list.
What is there are items, which come in two forms: tools and weapons.
You have two tools, which are a health kit, which heals one HP, and a grenade that cleans everything on the screen, when thrown. You find both items in the levels and you can have more than one of each kind, but you cant choose which item to equip.
Weapons on the other hand you can switch at any time. There are four weapons in total.
First is the unlimited ammo pistol with 12 shots per mag, which is your standard slow-but-accurate firearm. Solid option, like most starter pistols. Can only be reloaded after you fired it dry, but I guess that is to make the game more difficult, adding your ammo count to the things you have to be aware of. This works, because while reloading is fast, having unexpectedly no bullets in your gun can prove fatal in many encounters.
Next up is the shotgun with I think 8 shots. The firing rate is slow, but it kills all normal enemies in one hit and also has a bit of spread, like all video game shotguns. Can only be reloaded by picking up shotgun ammo in the level.
Then there is the SMG, which has around 30 shots. The shots are I think only a bit stronger than the shots of the pistol, but through its high firing rate and ammo count, this gun is still the better option. Like the shotgun, it can only be reloaded by picking up ammo in the level.
There is one more weapon, but telling you which one would be a spoiler, so you have to see for yourself.
Enough of with what you shoot with, now to what you shoot at. There are two kinds of enemies: melee enemies and projectile enemies.
Projectiles can be shot down, but melee enemies you either have to kill before they attack or get behind cover before they can hit you, but taking cover is only an option in specific encounters.
There are also situations where you can save civilians from zombies, a successful rescue gets rewarded with an item. You have to be quick, but it is possible to rescue each hostage.
In general, there are no encounters that I can honestly describe as downright unfair, even though most of them can be pretty unforgiving, but there is an annoying bug that makes hitting enemies on the edge of the frame difficult, but you can get used to it.
There are three checkpoints in the game, one in the beginning, one in the middle, and one near the end, which are unlocked from the start, and you can choose at the beginning of each new game from which you want to start.
You can choose on specific points where you want to go, but there is a direct path to the final boss, even though you have to find out which, and deviating will mostly bring your more enemies to kill and a few extra items, so its up to you if you want to take that risk.
The final boss, without spoiling too much, is too easy compared to the rest of the game but otherwise inoffensive. Also, he looks pretty cool.
This brings me to the part of the game, which was a point of concern at first but won me over very quickly: the graphics.
As you can see in the screenshots, Project Corpse goes with a PS1/Early 3D Arcade Games aesthetic, which is very blocky and muddled, classic low-res as you see it regularly today.
First, this put me off a bit, but having played such aesthetically unpleasing games like Cruelty Squad, I decided to give it a shot and I have to say, the graphics work in the game's favor, making everything look fittingly grizzly and rotten, as a classic zombie apocalypse should.
Regarding music, there is not much to say: there is one track for the main menu and one for the game, both are getting looped, which is okay because they are very discreet.
The sound effects are also not too much to write home about either, but there are some proper meaty attack sounds in her, which are pretty memorable.
So or so, for a one-buck title, this game goes above and beyond. You can beat Project Corpse in under an hour while also seeing almost everything it has in store, but before you get to that point, you have to endure some hard but fair deaths. But hey, at least it doesn't demand a quarter each time you die, so Id say give it a go!