Daymare: 1998

About Daymare: 1998

Daymare: 1998 is a third-person survival horror game by the Italian team Invader Studios, released on PC in September 2019 and on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in April 2020. It was first published by Destructive Creations and All In! Games; on Steam it is now sold by Invader Studios itself. The team began with Resident Evil 2 Reborn, a fan remake; after Capcom asked them to stop, they turned the work into an original game, and the director of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis joined as associate producer. Its debt to the late-1990s classics is plain, from the typewriter-style text to the save points.

The story starts on August 20, 1998, at Aegis Laboratory, a secret government facility on an island off the coast of Washington, where an experimental biochemical weapon has leaked. A special unit called H.A.D.E.S. is sent in to recover the research and erase the evidence. What begins as a security breach spreads to Keen Sight, a quiet town in Idaho surrounded by forest, whose people are turned into mutated, bloodthirsty monsters. You play three characters in turn: Liev, an elite H.A.D.E.S. soldier; Raven, a helicopter pilot; and Sam, a forest ranger, each with their own view of what happened.

It plays the old way on purpose. Ammunition is limited, and you load loose bullets into magazines yourself. You save only at save points, backtrack through areas you have already cleared, open code locks and solve environmental puzzles. Enemies take a lot of punishment, a headshot is often not enough to drop them, and they can be dismembered. Your inventory, health and map are checked on a device worn on the arm rather than in screen menus. Some documents you find give a password for the game's real website, where more of the story can be read.

It is gory and fear-inducing rather than relentless: the rating boards point to blood, mutilated bodies and strong language, and one reviewer noted a few jump scares even as an adult. A first run takes about ten hours, more if you search every locker and read every file.

Reception has been divided. Players who wanted a new game in the style of the original Resident Evil games enjoy its atmosphere, lighting and puzzles; critics faulted its stiff animation, its script and voice acting, and a story that is hard to follow. It suits survival horror fans who like scarce resources and backtracking and who will forgive rough edges. A prequel, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle, followed in August 2023.

How to play Daymare: 1998

1. Explore in third person and aim your weapon to fight the mutated townsfolk.
2. Count every bullet: ammunition is limited, and you load loose rounds into magazines yourself.
3. Check your inventory, health and map on the device worn on your arm.
4. Look for clues and documents to solve environmental puzzles and code locks and open new paths.
5. Save your progress at save points, since the game does not save for you everywhere.

Tips

• Enemies are hard to kill and a headshot does not always drop them, so aim carefully and do not waste rounds on a foe you can walk around.
• Refill your magazines with loose bullets when you are safe; doing it in the middle of a fight costs time.
• Keep ammunition in reserve for boss fights: players report having to reload an earlier save because they reached a boss with too few bullets.
• Read the documents you find; they hold puzzle clues and codes as well as the story.
• Remember locked doors, code locks and lockers; you will backtrack to them later.
• Use more than one save slot at save points, so a bad position does not lock you in.

Questions