D-Corp

Genre: Tower Defense / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

D-Corp, released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a game that combines Tower Defense and Party Game elements in a sci-fi romp that puts players in the role of robots collecting resources on an alien world while fending off hostile forces bent on throwing themselves into the machine being used to process those resources, gunking up the works with their bodies.

The presentation here, at least in terms of the overall impression it conveys, is pretty good. The game uses colorful, slightly-cartoony 3D visuals to depict its areas and characters, backed by a forgettable but fitting synthesized soundtrack. In other words, there’s nothing truly excellent going on here, but it all looks decent and polished.

Of course, with all that qualifying language I just used, you’re undoubtedly expecting this to be followed by a catch, and that catch is this: Due to the indistinct nature of various gameplay elements, and how far out the view is from the action, it can be difficult to discern what’s going on at any given time, especially when things get hectic. Is that enemy stunned? Is that a cactus plant I need to mine or just a destructible part of the scenery? Does going from here to there require a jump? Is that a jump I can actually make? These are unfortunately the sort of questions you’ll find yourself asking time and again while playing this game, and I should note that’s just talking about docked mode – the tiny screen in handheld mode is only going to be worse.

Also, I don’t know where else to mention this so I’ll just say so here: the game’s movement speed is annoyingly slow.

Apart from these frustrations, this is a pretty good blending of Tower Defense and Party Game, with some good ideas and some wonderfully hectic action. If the visuals in this game were designed more with practicality in mind, I would likely have a very different impression of this game.

As-is, D-Corp is… fine. It has its charms, but those charms are countered by a lot of frustration. If you’re looking for a multiplayer-focused Tower Defense game, you definitely have better options, but you may still get some enjoyment out of this game.

tl;dr – D-Corp is a game that combines Tower Defense and Party Game elements, and it would be a decent meshing of the two genres if the game’s visuals didn’t make it far too difficult to discern important gameplay elements. As a result, there is some fun to be had here, but overall you’re better off sticking with other entries in the genre.

Grade: C

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