Game Review: Daylight

Game review about Daylight by Zombie Studios.

Daylight is a horror survival game that will try to take you one a psychological thrill ride but does it deliver? I was doing all I could to try not to compare this game to Outlast, but it is so hard to forget the gold standard of a horror game that was set by Red Barrels studio.

The game starts you off right in the building you will be spending most of the game in. There is no real story build up or explanation of why you are even there. Upon exploring the first room is where I found my first problem with the game. While you are in the room there is a book bag that has glow sticks in it that you can use to see... A never ending supply of glow sticks. There is nothing scary about always being able to see, in fact it made it so I could just run around with glow sticks, not worrying about whether or not they would wear out because I knew where the bag was that had my unlimited supply. On top of searching and wondering around the rooms and hallways, using only the light of your phone and glow stick, you have someone that continues to buzz your phone giving you information about where to go or what to do. He is so hard to understand and he doesn't really tell you enough to help, so he becomes just white noise.

During my play through I had begun to get so frustrated about playing because there was no clear objective and the level design was so poor that I couldn't tell one room from another. I would try to use the map on my phone to navigate but it was as confusing as the guy talking on the phone. All of this just added to my frustrations. Once I was able to find a new avenue through the generic hallways, I stumbled upon another wealth of light, flares. The flares are used to scare the ghosts away but as with the glow sticks, there is an unlimited supply of flares. To add to that, in my play through, there was not one ghost that appeared. Not one! I understand that is procedurally generated but there should be at least one ghost. I found that I had begun to hope and ask for ghosts to appear to make the game scarier and more challenging.

To summarize, I found myself frustrated and upset that I spent most of my time wondering around trying to get scared. The game left me feeling like something was missing and lacking from the game. Zombie Studios seems to have rushed on bringing this game out because there is money to be made in horror survival genre again thanks to Outlast.