Corona Find Us

Corona Find Us is a party action game set during the COVID-19 pandemic where players control a nanotech robot tasked with destroying coronavirus particles inside human lungs. Designed for family and friends during isolation periods, the game features shared/split-screen co-op, randomly generated levels, and supports up to 16 players simultaneously with fancy particle effects enhancing the visual experience.

Corona Find Us: Review

Introduction

In the annals of video game history, few titles are as inextricably linked to their moment of creation as Corona Find Us. Released in the white-hot crucible of June 2020, this indie curio from developer LKHGames is less a traditional game and more a digital artifact—a hastily constructed, earnest, and deeply flawed time capsule from the early days of a global pandemic. It is a game that asks a simple, almost surreal question: in a world gripped by fear, isolation, and a desperate need for control, what if you could pilot a nanobot through a human lung to blast away the very virus causing the chaos? This review posits that Corona Find Us is a fascinating failure; a well-intentioned but technically impoverished attempt at therapeutic play that serves as a stark monument to the bizarre and rapid-response game development trend sparked by COVID-19.

Development History & Context

The story of Corona Find Us is a quintessential tale of the modern indie scene: rapid development, direct-to-digital distribution, and a premise ripped directly from the headlines. Developed and published by the enigmatic LKHGames (also listed as LKHTest on some storefronts), the game was crafted and released onto Steam with astonishing speed. Its release date of June 10, 2020, places its development squarely within the first wave of global lockdowns, a period of profound anxiety and surreal adaptation.

The vision, as stated in the official Steam description, was clear: to create a “party game about cleaning corona virus” intended as “the best game for family, you and your friends during the isolation.” The intent was likely a combination of catharsis and lighthearted co-operative fun—a way to gamify and thus exert mastery over an invisible, terrifying threat. Technologically, the game is a product of its immediate constraints. Built with seemingly minimal resources, it operates on a straightforward engine, boasting “fancy particle effects” as its primary technical boast. The gaming landscape at the time was saturated with similar rapid-fire releases; a quick search on MobyGames reveals a mini-genre of 2020 titles with “Corona” in their name, from Corona Simulator to Call of Corona: Micro Warfare. Corona Find Us was not an outlier but a participant in a strange, fleeting trend of pandemic-themed games.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

To call Corona Find Us narrative-heavy would be a significant overstatement. There is no epic tale, no character arcs, and no dialogue. The “narrative” is purely conceptual and delivered entirely through its premise. The player is not a character but an entity: a “nano technology robot.” The antagonist is not a personified villain but the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself. The setting is the intimate, internal battleground of a “people’s lung.”

Thematically, however, the game is rich with unintended subtext. It is a power fantasy of the most literal kind. In a reality where citizens felt powerless against a microscopic enemy, Corona Find Us offers direct, violent agency. See a virus? Destroy it. It transforms a complex, worldwide biological and sociological crisis into a simple game of whack-a-mole. The themes of sanitation, control, and medical intervention are reduced to their most basic interactive form. The choice of a co-operative party format is its most poignant thematic strength, implicitly arguing that the way through the crisis is togetherness, even if that togetherness is a chaotic split-screen scrum of nanobots. It’s a clumsy but heartfelt metaphor for collective action.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The core gameplay loop of Corona Find Us is brutally simple. Players control their nanobot using direct control from a diagonal-down perspective within a fixed or flip-screen environment. The objective: find and destroy the viral particles infesting the lung tissue.

• Core Loop: The loop consists of moving through the organ-like environment, locating virus clusters, and presumably engaging with them. The promise of “randomly generated levels” suggests an attempt at variability, but within the confines of its minimalistic design.
• The Big Innovation (And Flaw): The game’s most audacious claim is its “no limitation of player numbers,” though it “suggests” 2 to 16 players. This implies a Super Bomberman-like approach to split-screen, potentially descending into a chaotic, unreadable mess of activity. This is either a bold design for a massive family gathering or a technical impossibility that was never properly tested.
• Combat & Progression: Details on combat mechanics are scarce, but it likely involves a simple “shoot” or “collide” function to eliminate viruses. There is no indication of any character progression, upgrade systems, or skill trees. This is pure, unadulterated arcade action.
• UI & Presentation: The user interface is undoubtedly minimal, focusing solely on the action. The “fancy particle effect” is the sole noted visual flourish, meant to provide visceral satisfaction upon destroying a virus. The overall systems design reflects a game built for instant, simplistic gratification rather than deep engagement.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The world of Corona Find Us is a functional one. It builds not a lore-rich universe but a conceptual playspace. The setting is a abstracted representation of the human respiratory system, likely rendered in simple, colorful graphics to facilitate clarity amidst the promised chaos of 16-player co-op.

The art direction, from what can be gleaned, is utilitarian. The diagonal-down perspective and fixed screen hearken back to early arcade and SNES-era multiplayer games. The visual goal is not realism but readability. The sound design is a complete unknown, but one can imagine simple, satisfying sound effects for destruction and perhaps a repetitive, upbeat soundtrack to maintain the “party” atmosphere. The overall atmosphere is not one of grim biological horror but of a cartoonish clean-up job. It aims for levity, using its setting as a backdrop for gameplay rather than a source of narrative or emotional weight. The contribution of these elements is purely functional; they exist to enable the core co-op premise and nothing more.

Reception & Legacy

Corona Find Us vanished into the digital ether as quickly as it appeared. Its reception can be quantified as near-total obscurity.

• Critical Reception: The game failed to garner a single professional critic review on major aggregators like MobyGames. It was ignored by the gaming press, likely seen as a curiosity not worthy of deep critique.
• Commercial Reception: SteamSpy estimates ownership between 0 and 20,000 copies, with a paltry 20 followers on the platform. Its player score on Steambase sits at a dismal 33/100, aggregated from just six user reviews (2 positive, 4 negative). One of the few Steam discussions, from May 2020, contains a single post simply stating “This game is very funny,” which reads as either sincere amusement or sarcastic critique.
• Lasting Legacy: The legacy of Corona Find Us is not one of influence but of exemplification. It stands as a perfect example of the “zeitgeist game”—a product created to capitalize on or comment on a momentary cultural moment. Its influence on subsequent games is negligible. However, its place within the pantheon of COVID-19 themed games is secure. It is a historical footnote, a game that reflects the industry’s and players’ immediate, often awkward, response to a traumatic global event. It is studied not for its design brilliance but for its existence as a cultural artifact.

Conclusion

Corona Find Us is not a good game by any conventional metric. It is technically limited, critically ignored, and commercially stillborn. Its gameplay mechanics are undeveloped, its narrative is nonexistent, and its ambition wildly outstripped its execution. Yet, to dismiss it entirely would be to miss its unique value. It is a raw, unpolished, and earnest expression of a desire to cope, to connect, and to conquer fear through the language of play. It is a video game as a primary source document for a period of profound global anxiety. As a piece of entertainment, it fails. As a fascinating, flawed, and poignant artifact of a specific time and place in world history, it is utterly compelling. Its definitive place in video game history is not on a list of greats, but preserved in amber as a curious, heartfelt relic of the pandemic era.