Should You Buy The Day Before?

The Day Before, despite suspicion it was never going to see the light of day, actually launched into Steam Early Access on PC. But is it worth having? If you’re wondering whether you should buy The Day Before, here’s what you need to know.

Should You Buy The Day Before?

Thinking of buying The Day Before? Don’t. Don’t even entertain the notion. Right now, the game is no longer available to buy on Steam, but there’s the possibility it could come back. And given its notoriety, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if people started selling access to it online, not unlike the now-deleted and vastly superior P.T.

It is a horrible, horrible shell of a game. It’s been accused of being an asset flip, and while I can’t confirm that 100%, as one Reddit user points out, it makes major use of store-bought assets. I don’t buy developer Fntastic’s claim that the team was working on this for five years. And since Fntastic has now shut down, it’s not going to get any better.

What’s Wrong With The Day Before?

There is so much wrong with this game that it’s hard to know where to start. “This was our first big experience. Shit happens,” Fnastic said in a recent tweet. That’s an accurate description of The Day Before, and I’ll admit that I wrote about the game thinking it might actually happen. As a serious zombie fan, I wanted this to be good. But what we got was one big lie, and I’ll begin with the biggest lie of all.

Despite being advertised as an MMO (in footage that Fntastic has since deleted, along with all their YouTube content), The Day Before is not an MMO. It’s an extraction shooter with an insultingly small play area.

Even if I overlook its heavy use of store-bought assets, there’s so much wrong here. The first sign something was off was when I headed to the in-game store and found one player with their head up another player’s butt. But other people had even worse experiences, finding themselves trapped in walls, unable to progress.

But I persevered and, making my way into the city, found it was dead. And I’m not talking Day of the Dead dead, where the zombies flood the streets. I encountered three or four zombies at most.

I had ammo, so I was able to dispatch the undead, and when I ran out of bullets, I got ready to switch to melee combat. Except there’s no melee combat in The Day Before. Short of jumping in a car and mowing down the zombies, there’s nothing you can do without ammo.

And that’s when I actually got in. It took me about ten tries just to find a working server. I’ve seen other players encounter each other, but I never saw another living soul outside of the base area. Speaking of the base, there’s no crouch walk animation, so other players just slide across the floor.

I could go on, but I think you’ve got the picture. The Day Before feels like an early alpha or even a proof of concept, something that’s passed around from publisher to publisher. If you want to know what it’s like, seek out one of the many YouTube videos that show the game in action. I can recommend this video from Cr1TiKaL, who ran into even bigger bugs than I did.

So, the answer to should you buy The Day Before is a Darth Vader-level no.