4.6 /10 1 Votes4.6
3/10 GameSpot Initial release date 29 April 2014 | 6/10 Steam 48% Metacritic | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date(s) NA: April 29, 2014PAL: April 30, 2014 Similar Zombie Studios games, Survival horror games, Other games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Daylight is a survival horror video game developed by Zombie Studios and published by Atlus for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. It was the first game to be powered by Unreal Engine 4.
Contents
Gameplay
The player's goal in each level is to search for notes and logs from the hospital's past, referred to as "remnants", by looking for markings using glow sticks. Once all remnants in a level have been collected, the player is able to acquire a "sigil", an item of significance to the hospital's past, such as a teddy bear and a Bible. Bringing the sigil to "the Seal of Shadows" will unlock the next part of the building, allowing the player to advance further into the hospital and, possibly, to freedom.
Discovering remnants can cause a marking on her arm, which attracts the dangerous "shadow people". The player can either make them disappear by using flares or lose them by running away. The player cannot access any weapons; the only tools available are glowsticks, flares, and a cell phone. The environment layout is randomly generated. The enemies and other antagonists are procedurally spawned.
The game's interface includes the number of remnants the player has to find and the threat level in the hospital. As threat level increases, monsters are more likely to appear.
Plot
The plot is centered around a woman named Sarah who regains consciousness in an abandoned hospital with no memory of how she got there. A mysterious voice tells her to find the secrets of the hospital. With a cell phone, which is her map, she must explore the haunted hospital and its criminal past in order to escape.
As Sarah explores the hospital and the adjacent prison, she begins to learn of the hospital's past, where twelve witches were executed and buried on the hospital grounds, with a thirteenth witch escaping death due to her turning in the other twelve witches. After gathering all of the clues, Sarah realizes that she is the descendant of the thirteenth witch, which is why the spirits of the other twelve witches are haunting her.
Reception
Daylight received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the PC version 50.90% and 51/100 and the PlayStation 4 version 47.00% and 48/100. GameZone's Joe Donato opined "Daylight accomplishes nothing. Its attempt to expand on the Slender formula is only enjoyable for as long as you’d ever want to play Slender anyway, and it isn’t nearly as effective."