The real surprise, though, is the effective post-release work that the developers did to fix their game and transform it into something worthwhile after starting it off as a frustrating failure.
White Day isn’t at the top of its genre, but it’s a solid entry. It turns out that if I’d searched a random room and found a special spray that there were no clues for, I’d have had the chance to play a QTE and finish the boss off. I attempted this mission and died a number of times before finally surrendering and consulting the internet. After triggering growth of the plants, the player has to run around dealing with each individual shoot before taking on the main trunk by using an item they’re told will cripple it. The worst, offender, though, was a puzzle/boss fight that has the player battling a Triffid infestation (Google it) in the school’s first building. Whether it’s aiming a magic mirror at a teleporting ghost, or positioning speakers at key points around a room, the camera frequently proved a hindrance. The notes that offer clues to item locations require the player to absolutely scour the rooms, and scenes that require quick action tend to demand a kind of precision that’s incredibly hard to manage from a first-person view. A number of the puzzles go woefully unexplained, or are difficult to control. It’s not as carefully tuned as it could be, though.
#WHITE DAY A LABYRINTH NAMED SCHOOL MODELS SERIES#
Now that I was able to focus on learning the game’s story and puzzling out its mysteries, what I found was a largely competent horror game in the vein of Silent Hill and Clock Tower where a trapped character works their way through a series of trials, solving puzzles and making choices to send them towards one of many endings. Then, when the janitors weren’t always in the player’s face, dragging them into impossible-to-enjoy gameplay, they were just menacing figures that popped up now and again to provide a decent threat without taking over the experience.Īfter these tweaks, White Day was completely transformed. It took them three tries, each one shortening the janitors’ sight range, slowing them down, or lowering the damage they did until they finally found a solid balance. These intractable foes completely ruined the adventure’s pacing by forcing players to either take part in a chase or constantly hide, resulting in the same two minute gameplay loop repeated ad nauseum. The second building offered no such advantages thanks to an open-concept design that ensured a janitor could always see the player the moment they moved. In White Day‘s first building, long corridors with plenty of doors meant there was a slight chance the player could avoid a chase by going into a room and hiding for 90 seconds or so. There was no reliable way to escape them, save for ducking into a bathroom stall and remaining very still. They had eagle eyes and the hearing of bats, and the moment they got the slightest sense that the player was around, they’d run straight for them, nearly as fast as the player could move.
They stalked the halls of the school, unafraid to use the cudgels they carried to beat trespassing students to death. They were joined by a whole passel of vengeful spirits and a bunch of murderous janitors who made the thing almost impossible to play. Players assumed the role of a teenage boy who winds up staying after classes and finds himself locked in with a bunch of girls who have their own reasons for sticking around. White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is a first-person horror title set after-hours in South Korea’s most haunted place of education. Suddenly, when I came back, it was a pleasure… well, a pleasure where ghosts occasionally appear right in front of the player and scream. A sadistic difficulty spike made me stop playing for quite some time, and during my absence from play the developers put out a series of patches that repaired the biggest flaw I found in its design. I’m incredibly happy that I waited to review White Day, because it did not make a good first impression. WTF So you just expect me to randomly check out that room before fighting the tree? LOW The entire second building, pre-patch.
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