Daylight

Daylight is gold when it comes to scares, but is merely sterling silver in the gameplay substance department. The price might be worth the risk, though.

A Slender clone that actually gets things right... mostly.

Tons of atmosphere, but little in the way of replayability.

Daylight fulfills its purpose as an horror game, but doesn't offer many new mechanics and the story isn't surprising at all. If you haven't played Outlast, perhaps you'll find here the terrifying indie game you're looking for in PS4

Horror with randomly-generated elements is well worth exploring, but this relies on many stale genre cliches. [July 2014, p.68]

Daylight is a victim of its most-touted feature. When the random generated items and enemies work, every step carries a palpable sense of dread and unease. But the immersion’s lost when the player gets caught in an enemy spawning loop with too few flares is hard to get back. The story’s climax works better on paper, and bland visuals just make maze navigation aggravating.

Thanks to the sound design Zombie Studios manage to create a nightmarish atmosphere. But in the end Daylight is no match for Slender or Outlast.

Daylight is just another first-person horror game. But with its short story and weak graphical features (even with Unreal Engine 4), it lacks originality. If you are looking for real horror, you can find it somewhere else.

I really wanted to like Daylight, and at a basic level it works; it’s just the execution that bogs it down. What the game sort of feels like is an early beta with a lot of small tweaks yet to be made to the gameplay, environments, UI and engine performance.

Daylight tries hard to scare you with its soundscape and atmosphere, but unfortunately it treads an all too familiar haunting ground that leaves you sitting impassively in your seat rather than at the edge of it.

An interesting concept, but the game's lack of control over the scares removes any possible creeping horror. [July 2014, p.92]

Daylight wants to scare the pants off of you, but stumbles with the basics instead. Just play Outlast. [July 2014, p83]

Ultimately, Daylight does manage to produce a few frightening scenarios thanks to the impressive audio, but it's a shame the story, gameplay, and environments aren't as well developed as the sound. The bones of something more chilling (and satisfying) are here, but there just isn't enough meat on them.

If you get lucky with the level generation and don’t abuse the mechanics then there’s enough here for a playthrough with a few shocks that will only take a couple of hours – but the risk of an utterly duff experience is too high to recommend.