Daymare: 1994 - Sandcastle PS5 Review 6.5/10 "Backtracking to the ‘90s" 🧟 @transvaalgf @InvaderDevs #IndieGame #GameDev

The original Daymare lives in infamy to me. When originally reading about it, the developer had published a list of features for the game and within said list was ‘backtracking’. I found it very amusing, as although I loved old school horror, I never had nostalgia for running back through areas I had already been through, but to my surprise, when I finally joined Twitter and engaged with Twitter horror gaming fans I found that yes, people did indeed love a bit of backtracking!

If you search for ‘horror game backtracking’ on Google, Reddit pops up with a lot of pro-backtracking articles, and the third hit is a thread entitled ‘I love backtracking (especially in horror games)’ so I realise that, although it is something I have never thought about, it was genuinely a feature to some and in the case of Daymare - a very important one, as the game is completely sold on nostalgia. Its biggest selling point is it’s going to try to take you back to the good ol’ days of survival horror.

In this prequel, you play as a member of H.A.D.E.S., a special forces unit tasked with retrieving a briefcase from a secret government facility. Obviously, the secret government facility is all up and running and all of the employees are happy as Larry and definitely all alive… no, don’t be silly! Of course, the employees are nearly all dead and something has gone terribly wrong, and now it’s up to you to figure out what's happened and hopefully complete your task without being brutally killed by the monsters that now roam the facility.

Two things may have now popped in your head, firstly – ‘who the hell is Larry, and why is he so goddamn happy all the time?’ And two, ‘that sounds awfully like the plot to a Resident Evil game’, well… you would be right, it is very similar, some may say ‘exactly the same’, but like I said at the start of this article - that's what the game is trying to achieve, it wants to be a Resident Evil tribute.

Now, could it expand out of Resident Evil’s orbit and be different while still capturing the magic? Yeah, but it really does not want to, and it really commits to the insanity and campy schlock with the plot, especially towards the midway point, so even if it is derivative, I still enjoyed what it had to offer.

One big flaw that will be very evident to whoever picks up this title is the cutscenes, one of the first cutscenes takes place on a helicopter and bloody hell is it bad, it has to be one of the worst I’ve seen in a good couple of years. Three people are in that helicopter  - well, I say ‘in’, they seem to flicker in and out every few seconds - one of the male characters’ hair was doing the Hokey-Cokey, it was there, then it flicked out of existence for a bit, then back, then poof! Gone again. It was pretty unstable, the rest of the cutscenes get a bit better, but they are not polished, and with this being a really early cutscene - it gives a poor early impression.

Now, if someone described the combat to me before I played the game, I would have sworn I would have hated it, you start with two weapons, a shotgun, and a machine gun. I did think it was cool - you are special forces and actually get sent in well-prepared, not with a handgun with barely any bullets and a knife, but actually practical weapons. It is a shame that you only have three weapons, but all can be upgraded so it is not the end of the world, you find upgrades throughout Daymare by unlocking lockers using a hacking mini-game, which was surprisingly fun and simple, it kept you on your toes and constantly willed you to explore, desperately trying to bag a new upgrade, especially as you had such limited weapons.

The third gun you get is a freeze gun, effectively. It sprays liquid nitrogen both as a bullet and a spray, it is pivotal as it is used for puzzles as well as killing enemies, as certain enemies need to be frozen before they are killed, as they are immortal and if you don’t freeze them first, they will keep coming back.

The enemies are controlled with electricity, when one is killed a ball of electricity comes out of them and can drift from one body to another, blue for normal enemies and red for the immortal ones. You can stop the ball by shooting a freeze bullet at it. One thing I will say is that this does get harder as it goes on, as trying to take down enemies, freeze certain ones and stop the electricity balls gets very difficult with so many enemies on screen at once, but I thoroughly enjoyed the combat, and though it had variety, enemies were always a challenge and you always had to be on alert.

SUMMARY

Daymare 1994 – Sandcastle is effectively a budget Resident Evil, a throwback to the ‘90s with some of the best and worst things of the old-school horror genre coming through, it’s janky, unpolished, and not particularly scary - but combat is enjoyable, and the story has a campy charm to it.

If you love classic survival horror games and can live with some technical issues, I do recommend giving Daymare 1994 a whirl. Especially if you love some backtracking.