If you’re looking for some screenshots click here to view all the ones I took for this game.

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In the far future, humanity has left a most probably ruined Earth and found another planet to settle. Huge generational ships with cryostasis and an anti-aging serum, U-Fix, were sent to the stars to achieve species continuation. Unsurprisingly, what came up from it was a corporate-ruled dystopia where most citizens are used as de-facto slaves, with a class system ensuring that only the select few, by proportion, live in fair conditions. Woken up from frozen slumber, you set out to explore the dilapidated arcology… everything is a bleak, toxic-fume-ridden, gray-scaled hell hole.

CORPUS EDAX tells a tale of resistance and revolt against a crooked system, inevitably led by yourself as the deus-ex-machina clichè of the week. The characters aren’t particularly charismatic or deep—only a few side questions to get basic background are present; most of them aren’t further elaborated upon at any point, so they aren’t really relatable either. Your choices will influence the story to some extent, however it will always boil down to the same finale, with moderate changes such as different characters being alive, hostile or otherwise.

The low-poly visuals are offset by excellent lighting effects; this choice of art style does a good job of emphasizing how barren and uniform everything is—a society without soul, people mere tools to an end. The mix of brutalist and cyberpunk influences works well in creating an environment that feels unique and is interesting to explore, its atmosphere well-compounded by apt sound effects and a somber soundtrack.

The level design trades location variety for density, meaning places aren’t as large, but there’s a lot of stuff to find in each of them; at least, for the first half of the adventure as it becomes far more linear later on. Other than locales related to the main quest, you’ll be able to freely explore, and put your skills to use in circumventing locked containers with hacking, jumping in vents with good athletics, and stealthily picking locks with the right tools in a variety of original minigames, depending on the task.

Exploration is rewarded very well, perhaps too much so: the careful explorer will amass a wealth of skill books, items to sell and consumables far in excess of what would be well-balanced. There’s no map, and some locations may feel labyrinthine at first, however this is offset by landmarks you can memorize as points of reference.

Stealth, your go-to choice in case you don’t have a combat build, is finicky and unreliable, with a “shadow meter” displaying how visible you are, and enemies seeing or detecting you from weird angles more than a few times. Also, forget stealth takedowns—you’ll need a weapon to either throw or hit an enemy within close range, a feat not always easy given the clunkiness.

As humanity somehow forgot how to make guns or any type of ranged weapon, you’ll solely rely on your fists and improvised melee weapons to defeat your foes, though the same goes for them. A basic system of block, dodge and combos is in place for fights, but without any further depth to it, aside from passive perks enhancing your existing abilities or unlocking slightly better combos that have knockdown effects or more speed. The physics-based ragdolls and good degree of environment destructibility make fights very weighty and immersive enough, although don’t expect realism, since you can kick people 50 feet away. It becomes stale and repetitive not after long, since all enemies are the same, and your moves mostly also stay as such.

Don’t get me wrong, the combat is fun and enemies can become hard to handle if they gang up on you in enclosed spaces, but for the rest, they can literally be kicked into pitfalls or kited around while you throw stuff at them until they’re all unconscious or dead. The sense of challenge is hampered by how stupid the AI is, and how limited their movesets or actions prove to be. Bosses are just normal people, which is realistic and fair on one side, but it becomes terribly underwhelming when they don’t have any special move, ability, or other trick up their sleeve to make fighting them much harder than your average security guard or thug. One knife, syringe or glass piece thrown to the head and it’s all over for them all the same, without exceptions.

Skill and attribute points are only awarded after completing quest objectives, either main or side, and not for using your skills or defeating enemies. You’ll get money, too, by either selling stuff or finding valuables that magically become money on the spot—however, there isn’t much use for cash at all, save for buying weapons at the armory, of which you’ll find an endless amount around already, or protein cans from vending machines, which function as medkits. Everything is really cheap, and money is used to bribe people only a few times in the entire story.

It's a solo dev from what i read and thus i will be more leniant.

It has fun ideas and it's fun to break a chair to use the chairleg as a weapon and occasionally throw stuff at peoples heads, or dragging a corpse to a face scanner to open a door.

My main negative is that the dev loves huge areas with nothing in it.
Starting with the labyrinth of alleys in the first hub, to every level afterwards and my main issue is, that it's an easy fix.
Like there is a mining cave and it has weirdly labyrinthian unnecessary walkways with a few container huts in it.
Out of like 20 containers, 1 had something in it. Just add some closets and chests and throw an occasional item in there to reward exploration.

Janky, fun mechanics, but not much substance. More of a tech proof I'd say and lots of potential.

I COULDN'T RIDE THE BUCKET TO VICTORY AND MY 89 YEAR OLD ASS COULD SOMEHOW BEAT THE LIVING STUFFING OUTA SOME GANGSTERS 0/10 WOULD RECCOMEND