forerunner to Daydream 1998, Daymare: 1994 sandcastle intends to drive the point home in its genre by once again offering a harrowing and gory adventure in which the Callisto Protocol, Resident Evil and other Dead Space remake rule lately. The first episode managed to seduce us thanks to an uncompromising and realistic gameplay without great technical mastery. What about this new episode? We invite you to discover it on this excursion into the heart of one of the most secretive places on earth.
Tester’s Note: This preview was created in 3 hours of gameplay on PC, so two runs with everything that the version provided by the publisher had to offer. The screenshots on this page are ours.
Survival horror still has a bright future ahead of it
TPS someday, TPS always… You don’t change a successful recipe, Daymare: 1994 sandcastle takes a large part of the elements of its predecessor, but greatly simplifies the gameplay issue. Immediately forget about the “realistic” armament of the previous episode, here we discover one easier inventory thanks to a completely revised and corrected interface. No need to pick up your dropped magazines or count your ammo, at least in “Normal” mode. The experience is intentional plus accessible for players, whether beginner or advanced. But many settings that affect, for example, aiming or automatic reloading are available at all times. You are free to choose which sauce to eat with.
And on the menu, enough to tell you that if you’re not careful, it’s your buttocks that’ll quickly become a main course! No amorphous or impotent zombies in there Daymare: 1994 sandcastleyour enemies here will get their hands on you quickly if you don’t correct them quickly, and do it right at the start of the game. We can’t reiterate enough, the shotgun is your best friend. The atmosphere is oppressive and the enemies particularly lively so keep your eyes open!
Regarding the soundtrack, the music will be able to effectively underline menus, cutscenes, as well as moments of suspense or escape, but will be absent for the rest of the time for the subscribers. Only the sound of your footsteps, the screams of the creatures in the distance and the creaking of the various structures will accompany your journey. And somber background noise that does the job in the areas we crossed, but must be confirmed for the rest of the game.
The 12 gauge, how do I serve it to you? With or without ice?!?
Daymare: 1994 sandcastle Explain the sequence of events that led to the postulate of Daydream 1998 but don’t think that the novelties are absent. When accessibility seems rigorous, you can count on one armament above all else big innovation in terms of gameplay: Frost. Accessible very quickly in the scenario, this technology will allow you to freeze your enemies and interact with the elements of the scenery to solve the different puzzles that will appear in front of you. Mechanical, defensive and offensive in more ways than one, the Frost technology will be your greatest ally in this adventure and the opportunities for upgrades will be numerous. Unfortunately, during our session, being limited to the first chapters of the game, we weren’t able to test much of it other than the most basic features.
And Daydream: 1998 was born from a canceled remake of Resident Evil 2 changed to an indie game after Capcom’s intervention, Daymare: 1994 sandcastle is totally original to him and introduces a new character who aims to tie in with his predecessor’s script. This time it’s Dalila Reyes who will act as the leading lady. As an operator in the HADES unit, this badass quickly encounters problems she never imagined during her mission. No more than his colleagues either, given the number of corpses we’ll be stepping over in the various corridors.
A technique for checking and annoying errors
So yes, graphically the gap in between Daydream: 1994 Sancastle etc Daydream: 1998 is palpable, and the mastery of the Invader Studios teams is remarkable, but the problems remain. During the cutscenes, we regularly notice that the characters’ eyes aren’t necessarily focused properly and the lip-syncing is strawberry at times, even in VO. So, when it comes to facial animation, there is still serious work to be done in order to achieve convincing rendition and track down the tenors of the genre. Anyway if Daymare: 1994 sandcastle is not evilit is clearly not equipped to compete with a The Callisto Protocol or one Empty room graphic problem.
Then the rigidity of the character, which was already a problem in the previous part, is felt again. Faced with fast enemies that can teleport short distances and are very aggressive, we are quickly overwhelmed. Thankfully, the save points are implemented fairly well, which will save you from restarting whole sections of the game due to an ambush you couldn’t handle.
Nothing unusual in a beta version, nasty bugs also spoiled our gameplay session to the point of completely blocking our progress. Teleport wildly, fall through the floor of the level…so many annoying glitches that will hopefully be fixed in the final version by release.
Scheduled for release in May this year, it was recently pushed back to August 30, 2023. Daymare: 1994 sandcastle Will be available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Playstation 5 and Playstation 4, and later on Nintendo Switch. A demo is also planned for everyone on PC starting May 11th.
