Gachikowa? The Coma: Recut (South Korean Horror Game Review)
“You were just another normal high school
student in Korea.
You had just sat down for your final exam,
exhausted from an all-night cramming session.
The result of all your preparation and those
gruelling hours spent studying was dozing
off in the middle of the test.
You awake to find yourself alone – no one
had bothered to wake you when the class was
over.
Night has begun, and you decide to head home.
If you can…”
So describes The Coma: Recut’s official
page, a South Korean indie game that came
out in 2017, itself being a remaster of the
original game, The Coma: Cutting Class, that
came out two years before that.
To sum it up in the quickest way possible,
it’s a side-scrolling horror game in which
you must escape from your nightmarish school
while dodging monsters and avoiding being
killed by two killers stalking the place.
But that doesn’t really do the best job
of describing the game, so let’s take a
closer look The Coma, aka how do I get these
fine ladies to kindly step on me?
The Coma was apparently partially inspired
by some of the key artist’s real life experiences.
South Korean high schools are notoriously
tough places to be with incredible pressure
spent studying in order to get into a suitable
university that will then set you up for life.
It’s these pressures that set up the game
and inform The Coma, the name of the nightmarish
world that the main character wakes up in.
You play as Youngho, a 17-year-old self described
nerd who rocks up to school after unsuccessfully
hitting on a girl outside the gates to find
that a classmate has tried to kill himself.
Youngho’s buddy Seho tells him that class
bully Myung-gil must have pushed him to do
it, and after the ambulance drives away, he
finds a pendant on the ground that belongs
to their teacher, the beautiful and uh, impressive
Ms Song.
Ms Song tells Youngho that she actually needs
to talk to him after class and he decides
to give it to her then.
Despite a classmate having just tried to kill
himself, tests must go on, and an exhausted
Youngho falls asleep during them.
He wakes up to find he’s the only person
in class and everything is dark and a little
weird.
Especially Ms Song, who now looks just a little
demented and wants to shank him to death.
These things happen.
After running around the nightmarish school
trying to avoid a pointy death, Youngho once
again runs into Yaesol, the girl he tried
to hit on at the front gates, and she informs
him that everything around them is very real.
He’s not dreaming.
And thus begins Youngho’s quest to escape
The Coma, a nightmarish world in which he’s
found himself suddenly dragged into.
It, and the people in it, resemble those in
the real world, but now they’re warped,
horrifying shades, creatures out to kill him,
or at the very least, hinder his progress.
I won’t get too deep into the plot here,
you really should play it yourself to fully
explore that.
I’ll likely do some lore videos later on
as well because I really love the world that
The Coma and its sequel have created, but
for now, let’s just look at the game itself.
The game is rather Clock Tower-esque in that
you have no way to fight the monsters trying
to kill you.
You have to run and hide when you’re spotted,
and trust me, you will be spotted a lot.
This game is nearly four years old now, based
on a game that came out two years before that,
and, well, let’s just say the mechanics
are a little dated already.
Most of the problems this game has were thankfully
solved in the sequel, but in terms of this
game, you’ll be dealing with a lot of crap
you can’t avoid, like the delightful Dark
Song suddenly spawning on the very same spot
you’re standing and killing you.
A lot.
The second game also introduced the sound
of the Vicious Sisters’ high heels, which
lets you know when one of the monsters is
lurking nearby, but that’s not the case
here.
One of the lovely stabby ladies, either Slasher
Song or Dark Song, will just randomly spawn,
and if you’re unlucky, it’ll be right
on you.
They will screech when they see you, alerting
you to the fact you’ve been spotted, but
that doesn’t mean a whole lot when they’re
literally already on you.
If you’re fast you can dodge and start running,
but chances are good that they’ll still
kill you quite a bit first.
Because you can’t attack, you have to hide.
This is generally done in toilets and lockers,
but you must do so out of the monster’s
sight or she’ll spot you and attack anyway.
You also have a stamina gauge, which means
that if you get tired you’ll slow to a crawl
and she’ll catch you.
This can be remedied with various items you
find around the place, such as water and coffee,
and you can also find coins to buy items to
heal yourself from vending machines as well.
Various monster attacks will alternatively
make you bleed or poison you, and you’ll
need these various items to heal yourself.
In general, items are decently plentiful,
but there are periods where you might find
yourself out of cash and struggling to find
what you need, so discretion is advised.
Being a side scrolling game where you can’t
attack, the objective is to hunt down items
you need to allow you access to the next part
of the game.
The entire game takes place in Sehwa High
School, but there are various buildings and
each building has numerous floors.
Several things will impede your progress,
such as locked rooms that need key cards to
open, or passwords for computers hidden in
other locations.
All the while you’ll be hunted down by one
of the Song monsters, murderous ladies that
look like corruptions of your lovely teacher
who wants your head on a pike.
And why is our teacher trying to kill us,
anyway?
Well, you’ll need to make sure you pick
up all the random notes and lore tidbits lying
around the place to find out.
The game rewards exploration with these tidbits
lying around seemingly everywhere, so take
your time and check each and every room to
be rewarded with honestly some fascinating
worldbuilding.
You can save at designated blackboards around
the place, and considering how much you’ll
die and the amount of progress you will lose,
I highly recommend making copious use of them.
The game can be rather brutal at points with
killing you over and over, and if you’re
low on health, bleeding or poisoned, and the
thing you’re looking for is all the way
on the other side of the map, you’re not
gonna be in for a fun time.
You can pretty much guarantee Ms Song will
spawn to wreck your day repeatedly.
The game comes with several different endings,
adding a bit of replayability.
The endings change depending on what you did
or didn’t do, but sadly, unlike the second
game, there are no costumes here, so you’ll
have to play through each time with the default
Sehwa uniform.
The game isn’t massively long though, and
a first playthrough will take you maybe four
hours at best if you really look around.
Once you know what you’re doing, that can
be massively shortened as you seek the other
endings.
The True Ending also sets up the sequel, which
in my opinion is a far superior game, but
I’ll get into that in another video.
You can also unlock some interesting extras
to check out once you’ve beaten the game
at least once, and these feature concept art
and… hey, wait a minute…!
All in all, I think this game is decent, but
a little aged now.
If you only had time for one, I would definitely
recommend the sequel over this one, as it
does everything much better and, on top of
that, everything you need to know from this
game is explained there as well.
We actually played through the sequel first
and then went back to this game because we
wanted to know more about the world and yeah,
it was a massive downgrade in terms of game
mechanics and much harder to get through as
well.
Of course, if you start with this game first,
as was intended, then you’re unlikely to
know how much better it can be, so maybe it
might be better that way.
However, despite being a little clunky to
play these days, I think this game excels
in atmosphere and world building.
Again, both of these are ramped up in the
sequel, but it all began here.
The world of The Coma, the twisted version
of Sehwa High School that you’re forced
to explore, is genuinely creepy and might
get an audible scream or two at certain points.
The more notes you get and the more you dig
into the history of the school, and of course
the history of The Coma and all those involved
in it, the more it draws you in and the more
you want to know.
The worldbuilding is superb and it’s such
a fascinating idea.
You could badly sum it up as “Silent Hill,
but in South Korea,” but that really doesn’t
do it justice nor even begin to cover the
depth of lore they’ve included.
The Coma is a fascinating idea born out of
unique South Korean experiences, both historical
and modern, blended into a fascinating game
that handles a little weird but has a ton
of heart.
The script is incredibly witty, and by the
looks of it the localisation was handled by
the English speaking co-writer, so it’s
less of a localisation and more of… this
is the same story by the same writer but in
English this time.
There are a lot of sayings and Western pop
culture references that seem incredibly out
of place for a South Korean student to be
saying, but knowing that it’s been done
deliberately by the English speaking writer
makes a little more sense.
It’s not translated oddly; that’s just
the actual intention the writer wants to get
across in a way that makes the most sense
to native English speakers.
The characters are also fantastic.
Each is unique and fully fleshed out, even
though they clearly inhabit fairly standard
tropes.
Youngho is your typical plain butter protagonist,
Myung-gil is a stock standard bully, Ms Song
is, uh, Ms Song.
If you’re into monster ladies, look no further.
Seho is the chubby, nerdy friend with a hidden
agenda, and Yaesol is… well if you know
how I can get her to step on me, please let
me know.
There are also brief mentions of Mina, Youngho’s
best friend who will become the protagonist
of the sequel, but she’s mostly invisible
for this game and, other than her brief appearance
in the true ending, is only mentioned a few
times.
But it’s clear that the second game was
planned before this one was even finished,
and that makes it all the better for me.
They tie together brilliantly, almost like
this game was nothing but a prequel, set-up
for the real story that we get in the follow-up,
Vicious Sisters.
Anyway, if you want to pick this game up now,
it’s available pretty much everywhere but
PlayStation, where for some reason it has
been delisted.
It’s available on Steam, Switch, and Xbox
though, and you can get the original, Cutting
Class, on mobile as well if that’s your
thing.
Plenty of options out there.
I will also be looking at the sequel very
soon, a game I enjoyed a lot more, so stayed
tuned for that, but how about you guys?
Have you played The Coma?
Let me know your thoughts on the game below
and I’ll see you again next time!
