The UploadVR Summer Showcase 2024 had a lot of great games to show off (and it also made me realise what a busy year this is going to be!), but one of the game’s that caught my eye the most was an early access game available in the soon to be defunct AppLab. Starring a cadaver that looked a bit like Tom Selleck and a goofy arcade-like gameplay loop, I knew I just had to try it

Many thanks to the publisher for the review code.

WEEKEND AT TOM’S
The premise of Hide the Corpse is as simple as the name implies. Your neighbours have phoned the cops after you (presumably) killed poor Tom. With four minutes on the clock until their arrival, the race is on to hide his body successfully enough to get away with murder. Thankfully, the police are as dumb as bricks meaning that they won’t bother looking too hard at that finger sticking out of the bubble-filled bath.

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Currently there are three stages available for you to test your body-hiding abilities: the house, the garage, and – bizarrely – underwater. Each one has their own hiding spots for you to utilise, and the underwater stage even has you fighting against water currents as you attempt to hide the body. With six potential hiding spots in each stage, you’ll soon find out that some are far easier than others. In the house, for example, it’s dead easy to hide Tom under the sofa cushions due to the conveniently human-shaped hole underneath; however, unlocking Tom’s secret safe (and then shoving him in and closing it afterwards) can be really hard to do in the four minute time limit.

What adds to that challenge is that Tom’s lifeless body is really heavy to drag around. The physics system really emphasises how difficult it is to shift a dead body as he starts falling our of your grip, forcing you to take a hold of him again. It doesn’t always feel realistic as dragging him across the floor by his arms and legs shouldn’t really be all that difficult, but the cartoonish nature of the game makes like difficulty in lugging him around more fun than frustrating.

To complicate matters further, once you become an expert body shifter you can start putting your skills to the test using the game’s scoring system. As well as a time bonus for finishing earlier, the latest update rewards you for cleaning up any evidence that may connect you to his death. Fingerprints must be washed off with a sponge, and any of Tom’s [randomly placed] belongings need to be disposed out of sight. Whilst the evidence unfortunately won’t affect the police’s search in any way, it’s still a great inclusion to encourage you to replay for a higher rank – especially as hiding the body and clearing all evidence in four minutes is pretty damn tough.

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All in all, Hide the Corpse really nails its simple premise and feels remarkably polished despite missing half of the game’s levels. With the full game being released in a couple of months, I’m excited to see what awaits. The three existing stages are already widely varied, so who knows what crazy scenario Tom the Corpse will find himself in next. A holiday resort? A park? A medieval castle? I’m genuinely excited to find out.

I’d personally like to see a little bit more depth added to the investigation to allow for an added sense of tension, and perhaps even a harder difficulty where the cops will search harder if they uncover any visible evidence. Perhaps the developers could implement a multiplayer mode where you work together to hide the corpse together. Regardless of what new features they have planned for the full release, I’m sure it will be delightful – and you can rely on us to update our review in September to reflect the new additions.

VERDICT
Hide the Corpse is such a perfect implementation of a simple idea. With its wonderful aesthetic, and weighty physics system, it’s the perfect game to show VR off to your friends. Even though the full release is a couple of months away, it’s a game I would highly recommend grabbing in its early access form as what is here is so damn good. No doubt when the game is finally complete, it will become one of my favourite Meta Quest 3 games.