Developed by Invader Studios and published by Leonardo Interactive, the Daymare franchise comes back as Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle which acts as a prequel to the original Daymare: 1998. We got ourselves a preview build and were able to experience a small slice of the retro-inspired horror game which features brand-new characters and a new story that is set before the events of Daymare: 1998. Originally the project started its life as a Resident Evil 2 remaster mod but I am happy to see the developer expanding it into a whole franchise. This is our preview of Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle in which we jump back as a new agent of H.A.D.E.S. and blow off heads of electric monsters.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle features a new protagonist, agent Dalila Reyes who is a former government spy and now working for H.A.D.E.S. The demo starts without any context or history and throws you straight in the action where you find yourself trapped inside a military installation with monsters banging on a locked door behind you. From there, you progress into the installation killing electricity-induced enemies and other monstrosities. Puzzles are once again a big part of the title and you will be solving plenty of puzzles while making progress in the game.
Coming to the gameplay of Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle, the game plays out pretty much in the same format as Daymare: 1998 which takes its inspiration heavily from Resident Evil 1 and 2. You have to first aim and then shoot at your enemies and your character speed is pretty normal as well. This is a third-person shooter, so the gameplay is naturally not as fast as a first-person shooter. You have the option to jog as well however the speed is not that much different from your normal walk. Staying true to its previous title, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle combines both shooting along with puzzle-solving where you come across various puzzles that you must solve before progressing in the game.
The demo had two different weapons, a shotgun and an SMG. The shotgun felt solid and packed a punch however the SMG was useless against the enemies. The high recoil and less damage made it next to useless. The shotgun was also effective because it was much easier to pop enemy heads with it and enemies in the game seemed to only die with headshots. I will mention here that the combat was pretty satisfying with the shotgun as it will blow away chunks of frozen enemies. Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle adds a new mechanic to the combat where you can shoot frost bullets or spray enemies with frost to freeze them and then shatter them.
This comes in handy because the enemies in Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle appear to be brutal, and they appear in big numbers. Using your frost bullets, you can freeze the enemies at one spot and then use the shotgun or melee attacks to kill them in one shot however the ability needs to be recharged and you have to have enough charged to freeze enemies. This also highlights the inconsistent hitboxes that the game currently has in the game. The hits seldom hit your enemies and sometimes they just vanish into thin air even if you aim right at the enemy and fire. For this very reason, I’ve tried to kill enemies with only headshots in the game.
For an added challenge, every enemy that you kill in the game, grants a buff to other enemies called Post-Mortem Gift. This makes the enemy that absorbs this energy tougher in the game. This makes them faster, deadlier, and naturally, harder to kill in the game as well. The more enemies you kill, the more energy they release, and the remaining enemies get tougher. The enemy design is pretty scary, and they actively dodge your incoming attacks. Some of the enemies are already tougher right from the start but if you focus on others first, they get more and more powerful with the absorbed energy.
This time around, you get an area scanner as well. Using the scanner, you can scan the environment as well as various objects that you can interact with. Scanning also gives you additional lore and information about the game if you are scanning a digital device. It comes in handy in solving different puzzles in the game as well. Talking about solving puzzles, you will also be using your frost gun for solving various puzzles such as the demo offered where I used it to cool down overheated pipes and also clear out burning fires.
Inventory management returns in Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle as well where you have to watch out for your inventory space while making sure that you have all necessary items with you. You also have to hunt for various items in the game as well such as finding keycards to opening doors. Interacting with locked doors or other objects opens a retro-inspired menu screen where you must choose the right item to use with the object or door you interacted with earlier. Enemies drop ammo and you find other random objects scattered around the game as well that you can use for your survival in the game. The inventory space is not as limited or hard as other survival titles but still, you cannot just pick infinite items in the game.
Visually, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle looks pretty good with its haunting visuals and interiors. While the preview builds only had a handful of in-game locations, all of them looked pretty good and detailed. One thing I did notice was weird path blocks that were just sitting there in normal areas. For example, in one of the scenes, there were stealth pilots sitting inside a hanger but the ladders leading to these fighters were blocked by a single box or a big cable roll. Normally, we see plenty of open paths in linear games as well so these simple paths being blocked looked just weird. I am not expecting to fly these fighters in the game but having the ability to climb up the stairs and walk around them would have been cool. I am hoping for more open areas in the full game.
Technically, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle seems to run just okay on an RTX 3080. While it requires plenty of optimization, the gameplay does feel a little choppy sometimes as well. Framerate dips are pretty common in areas where there is plenty of fire and are also very evident when you are moving the camera around quickly in order to fight the quick enemies of the game. Sometimes, I was unable to aim and shoot if something was too near to me. I do not know if this was an intended feature by developers, but I had to move around often in order to make my character take aim and finally shoot at the enemies. Apart from controls, visual hiccups were minimum and the sound design is decent as well with no audio issues.
While from the early access demo, it is clearly evident that while Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is shaping up to be an excellent horror title in the franchise, it still requires plenty of work. The gameplay and the overall game optimization are two aspects where currently the game requires the most work. The camera movement was a little shaky during quick changes and overall controls are pretty clunky at this point. Again, this is an early access build, and the final title will have much better performance but in its current state, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is looking to be a promising classic Resident Evil era horror game with plenty of potential.
