The world of Survival Horror is a scary one. Not only because of the thrills, but because it’s a somewhat hard genre to love. Back in the day it was all the rage, but it’s been years since we’ve seen a steady stream of horror games. Invader Studios hopes to scratch that itch with Daymare: 1998, now live on Kickstarter.
Daymare: 1998 is a modernized Survival Horror game with all the classic mechanics. Players will have limited resources in a world that would love to see them dead. They’ll have to work with a third-person, over the shoulder camera that forces them to face forward at all times. They’ll also need to explore the environment to find clues, solve puzzles and collect valuable resources. The horror itself is the result of an infection created by a shape-based biogenetics organization that is (probably) run by some incompetent people.
So… yeah. It’s Resident Evil, basically.
This connection makes sense. Invader Studios only recently formed, but the team has been working for years. Just a few years back they made the gaming media rounds with their unofficial Resident Evil 2 remake rendered in Unreal Engine.
Support from the Big Guys
This effort caught the attention of Capcom who, surprisingly, reached out the devs and invited them to their headquarters in Japan. While there, they spoke with many higher-ups who worked on Resident Evil, including the director for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. All of these folks took a look at Daymare: 1998 and came out impressed, urging fans to support the developers and their passion project. One of them—Satoshi Nakai, who worked as an enemy designer for several Resident Evil games—even joined the team, designing terrifying monsters for the game.
A lot of their quotes are a bit cheesy, but it’s cool to see Capcom supporting a new team of developers that took a ton of inspiration from their work.
The gameplay preview looks a bit rough, but shows promise. As a big fan of horror games, I can’t wait to see what Invader Studios has in store for us.
If, like me, you’re ready to step back into the world of Survival Horror, take a look at the Kickstarter page for more info. Good luck…
Cool of Capcom to show them so much support.
Yeah, I was really happy to see that. Such a weird contrast to Nintendo and Konami who just shut down fan projects. Which they of course have a legal obligation to do, but still.
It does genuinely look and sound so much like a Resident Evil game, if Capcom hadn’t shown them support I’d be worried about legal issues!
Its still a terrible name. Just like that Clock Tower remake that became an original IP – Remothered: Dastardly Fathers or something? Just nonsense, but not the charming kind of nonsense some Japanese games used to have (Illbleed, anyone?). Just ugly sounding titles. The main character is also not good. They showed this off a few months before hitting Kickstarter – I really wish they would’ve changed him. Looks like you’re playing as a gimp.
As a game it looks fine, I guess. But it takes a lot to make a third person, over-the-shoulder shooter into a proper horror game. It could be brilliant like RE4 or the RE Revelations games… or it could be done terribly, like RE6 and the online multiplayer RE game (Umbrella Corps and Operation Raccoon City). Its real hard to tell here if this in fact gets what makes a horror game good, y’know? So much of it comes down to pacing and encounters… and zombies suck. They’re the goombas of lazy survival horror. We’re not seeing enough here that’s interesting. Not saying it won’t be there, just that I’m not convinced yet.
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It really needs a main character, dangit. Characters are important! That’s why people care about the lore of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. You need personality in your game, and someone to react to the horrific imagery surrounding them. You need an avatar for the gamer – someone to connect to, something to care about. No one will care about “anonymous gimp soldier guy”
This should’ve gone through Square Enix Collective or something. Get some feedback before heading to Kickstarter. A few small tweaks could’ve made this so much more interesting.
I’ll admit that the title is dumb, yeah. It’s super weird that they call it Daymare: 1998 when it’s really more like horror games circa 2005. It’s got some potential. I’m a big horror game guy, and I’m as skeptical about them as anyone else, so I’m not getting hype about it or anything. The videos look rough but admittedly horror games only really work for the player themselves, so until I get my hands on a proper demo I don’t think I’ll be able to pass too much judgment. I do really hope they give the main character some personality… the biggest thing that made RE4 so much better than, say, RE6, was that Leon had this goofball “everyone thinks I’m cool, right?” attitude that made him a joy to play as. Oneliners are a dime a dozen but even something like that really adds to an experience. Then you look at RE6 Leon and he’s just boring, gruff shooter-man. Probably the worst decision that game made was stripping Leon of all the personality that made him fun.
Still, RE7 came around and showed that Capcom can still make a quality horror game. It’s far from perfect but a step in the right direction for the series, even if Ethan’s personality seems to be set strictly to “I’ve had enough of this shit already and I just can’t even begin to care” at all times. The villains more than made up for that imo.
[…] Daymare: 1998 has Kazuhiro Aoyama of Resident Evil 3 involved. […]