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Upon its announcement, I was immediately sold on the idea of The Day Before. After all, what other game in history can boast a cooperative, never-ending, zombie-slaying experience that continuously gets peppered with updates? But with high expectations comes an equally high risk of disappointment, which, unfortunately, is what I went through with the game’s disastrous launch – Fntastic’s day of reckoning in which they reneged on their original promise by providing a completely different and sadly more generic experience.
As soon as it dropped, The Day Before’s issues – apart from the fact that it somehow turned into an extraction shooter – became apparent: missions were repetitive, content was sorely lacking, the open-world environment wasn’t all that open, and overall gameplay was an utter chore. Outrage towards the game predictably became obscenely high; it was quickly ripped to shreds as The Day Before’s Steam page was bombarded with refund requests and scathing reviews.
But despite the overwhelming amount of frustration I, and I’m sure many others, felt upon entering Woodberry and the game’s sparse world, its initial premise – the developer’s original promise – makes The Day Before still worth saving. And yes, I am referring to what was initially showcased back when the game was first revealed in 2021 and not the bug-filled, not-an-MMO, early access mess we were presented with towards the end of 2023.
I still remember the excitement I felt upon seeing the short announcement trailer IGN had released in 2021. Hypothetical answers to what I would do if I were stuck in a zombie apocalypse came flooding back. Base building with other survivors, scavenging for supplies, fighting off living and undead attackers, and venturing out into the eerie and unknown rolled all into one package had been nothing but a pipe dream until that point, so I immediately bought into the concept, eagerly waiting for the day when it would drop.
Of course, we now know how that story ends, and its conclusion is one that would make even the worst horror stories sound pleasant. Fntastic’s sudden move towards making The Day Before into an extraction game remains puzzlingly inexplicable. It begs plenty of questions about whether the whole project was a scam from the beginning and is undoubtedly damaging to the industry as a whole. However, a cautionary tale only becomes cautionary once it ends, which is why we can’t let this game fail – at least, not one that’s this ambitious and massive in scale.
Take Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky and CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 as examples: both groundbreaking creations were widely panned at launch, with most players having already tossed them aside, ready to move on to the next thing. But after a few years of putting their heads down, both Hello Games and CDPR turned the fortunes of their respective projects around, with the latter even winning Best Ongoing Game at this year’s The Game Awards celebration.
Both of these games, if left to rot since the beginning, could have served as warnings, parables for developers not to overpromise and underdeliver. Instead, a show of passion and a little elbow grease turned what were supposed to be two cautionary tales into stories of inspiration, where no matter how bleak the outlook is, things can still be turned around.
Now, I do realize that the situation with The Day Before is largely different, as its notorious developer has already announced its shuttering a mere four days after releasing the game. Fntastic’s official website has also been rubbed clean, with the homepage only displaying a graphic of the studio’s shutdown statement. In addition, social media accounts for the studio’s CEO, Eduard Gotovtsev, have been deactivated, crediting the ongoing theory that this was all a well-thought-out plot to scam people out of their hard-earned money.
With all this in mind, an official rebuild and resurrection for The Day Before seems highly unlikely. But if there’s anything to take away from the aforementioned resurgences of Hello Games and CD Projekt Red, it’s that it’s never too late to turn things around. So even if it takes months or years for a complete overhaul, the original idea of The Day Before still makes it worth saving, if only to fulfill the promise that the community was given since the very beginning.
