THE CORRIDOR

Developer: Thomas Mackinnon | Publisher: Thomas Mackinnon | Release Date: 4 December 2020 | Genre: Adventure / First-Person Comedy | Website: N/A | Purchase: Steam

THE CORRIDOR is difficult to review without immediately spoiling the joke, because almost everything interesting about it comes from watching the game react to what the player does. On paper, it is almost comically simple. The developer describes it as a 20–30 minute experience about the relationship between player and game, and even jokingly categorises it as a game about walking down a corridor. That description is technically accurate, but deliberately leaves out just about everything that makes it entertaining.

The basic setup is wonderfully mundane. You are placed in a first-person corridor with an obvious button waiting at the far end. There is very little else to do, so naturally you walk over and press it. The game closes. Restart it, and the corridor is waiting again. Press the button again. The game closes again.

This quickly establishes the central joke. THE CORRIDOR is not really about reaching the end of a hallway at all. It is about a game becoming increasingly irritated that the player keeps doing exactly what it has supposedly been designed to let them do.

That makes the repeated restarts part of the actual structure rather than a technical problem. In fact, most of the fun (and achievements) are derived from launching the game again after it closes, refusing instructions, quitting at unexpected moments, or otherwise deliberately doing something the narrator does not want.

It is a clever idea, although getting booted back to the desktop constantly and having to restart the game can still become very annoying. The first few times are funny because they violate the normal expectation that a game should remain open while you are playing it. After enough repetitions, though, there is inevitably a point where reaching for the Steam library again starts feeling more like admin than comedy.

Thankfully, the game understands that the trick cannot sustain an entire conventional campaign. The official runtime is only around 20–30 minutes for a straightforward playthrough. It is essentially an interactive comedy sketch rather than a full-length adventure, and that short duration is absolutely the correct choice.

Once the player has demonstrated that they are going to keep returning, the game begins escalating its responses. The corridor changes, instructions become increasingly specific, and the narrator starts trying different methods to discourage you from reaching the button. Explaining the individual gags would ruin most of their impact, but the important point is that the game continually plays with the relationship between software and player.

At times it feels reminiscent of The Stanley Parable, particularly in the way a narrator comments directly on player behaviour and becomes frustrated when instructions are ignored. The difference is scale. The Stanley Parable builds a sprawling branching environment around the relationship between narrator and player, while THE CORRIDOR compresses a similar kind of meta-comedy into a tiny linear experience centred around one repeated objective.

There are also traces of something like There Is No Game, where the apparent objective is deliberately undermined by the game itself. In both cases, much of the amusement comes from wondering what happens if you refuse to cooperate.

Mechanically, almost nothing could be simpler. Most of the game consists of walking, looking around, and interacting with whatever has appeared in the corridor. There is no inventory, character progression, combat system, dialogue tree, or traditional puzzle structure to learn. That minimalism works because the real interaction is psychological rather than mechanical. Every time the game explicitly tells you not to do something, the immediate instinct is to try it. When it presents something that appears irrelevant, you naturally start wondering whether touching it will trigger another joke.

Difficulty is therefore almost nonexistent in the traditional sense. There are no demanding reflex tests or complex puzzles. Progress mostly requires noticing what the game is suggesting and then deciding whether to obey it or deliberately do the opposite. The writing carries nearly everything.

The narrator has a conversational, slightly exasperated tone that gradually becomes more central as the player refuses to disappear. The humour is self-aware without relying entirely on gaming references, and it frequently pokes fun at the conventions surrounding achievements, game design, player agency and the assumption that every interactive object must exist for a reason. Not every joke lands equally well, but the short runtime means weaker bits rarely hang around long enough to become painful. The game moves quickly from one idea to another and generally ends a gag shortly after the player understands it.

Visually, THE CORRIDOR is deliberately minimalist. The central environment is an extremely simple 3D hallway with flat colours, basic geometry and sparse decoration. Character models and props are equally crude when they appear, but this works in the game’s favour because visual spectacle would distract from the joke. The corridor itself acts almost like a blank stage. Because players become familiar with its ordinary layout so quickly, even a small change immediately becomes noticeable. A new object, altered wall, strange character, or unexpected structural change stands out far more than it would in an elaborate environment.

There are also some wonderfully silly visual sequences later on that benefit from the otherwise plain presentation. The fact that everything initially looks so bland allows increasingly strange alterations to feel more dramatic.

Sound is much more important than the visuals because so much of the game relies on narration. The voice performance sells the escalating frustration beautifully, moving between casual instruction, bargaining and outright annoyance without becoming excessively theatrical. Music is used sparingly, which suits the experience. Long stretches rely primarily on narration and environmental ambience, allowing specific musical or sound-based jokes to stand out when they appear. Controls are about as straightforward as possible for a first-person game. Movement and looking around are the primary actions, with contextual interaction used where necessary. There is little opportunity for the controls themselves to cause frustration because precise movement is almost never required.

Replay value is unusual. The basic experience has almost none once every joke is known. What extends the lifespan is achievement cleanup. Once 100% has been achieved, though, there is little reason to return. THE CORRIDOR depends too heavily on surprise for repeat playthroughs to have the same impact. That is not necessarily a criticism. The developer explicitly sells it as a 20–30 minute experience, and it costs very little. It knows exactly how much material it has and does not try to inflate itself into something larger.