''Daylight'' is a

survival horror Survival horror is a subgenre of survival of the players as the game tries to frighten them with either horror graphics or scary ambience. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical ac ...

video game developed by

Zombie Studios Zombie Studios was an American independent video game developer. It was formed in 1994 as Zombie, LLC by Joanna Alexander and Mark Long, formerly of the Sarnoff Research Center. Alexander and Long founded Zombie after they completed the design o ...

and published by

Atlus is a Japanese video game developer, publisher, arcade manufacturer and distribution company based in Tokyo. A subsidiary of Sega, the company is known for video game series such as ''Megami Tensei'', ''Persona'', ''Etrian Odyssey'' and ''Trau ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

. It was the first game to be powered by

Unreal Engine 4 Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game ''Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genre ...

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 A sigil () is a type of symbol used in magic. The term has usually referred to a pictorial signature of a deity or spirit. In modern usage, especially in the context of chaos magic, sigil refers to a symbolic representation of the practitioner ...

", an item of significance to the hospital's past, such as a

teddy bear A teddy bear is a stuffed toy in the form of a bear. Developed apparently simultaneously by toymakers Morris Michtom in the U.S. and Richard Steiff under his aunt Margarete Steiff's company in Germany in the early 20th century, the teddy bear, ...

and a

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

. 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

glowstick A glow stick, also known as a light stick, chem light, light wand, light rod, and rave light, is a self-contained, short-term light-source. It consists of a translucent plastic tube containing isolated substances that, when combined, make light ...

flare A flare, also sometimes called a fusée, fusee, or bengala in some Latin-speaking countries, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a bright light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for distress signaling, illumination, ...

s, and a

cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

. 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 survive the mysterious shadow people.

Reception

''Daylight'' received mixed reviews from critics. Aggregating review website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gave the PC version 51/100, and the PlayStation 4 version 48/100. ''GameZone'' 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."

References

External links

* {{Official website 2014 video games Atlus games Video games about ghosts Horror video games Hospitals in fiction PlayStation 4 games PlayStation Network games Survival video games Unreal Engine games Video games developed in the United States Video games featuring female protagonists Windows games Video games about witchcraft Video games using PhysX Video games using procedural generation