White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

 Switch
Metascore
63

Mixed or average reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
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  1. Digitally Downloaded
    Oct 3, 2022
    100
    White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is, simply, an excellent game. If you haven’t played it yet, you should. The new wave of re-releases of it, for the modern consoles, but especially the Nintendo Switch, give you the chance to do that. So, if you missed it last year, here are your Halloween chills for 2022 served up to you.

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User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 1 out of 2
  1. Jedzelex
    Jun 17, 2023
    1
    Yeah, I made the mistake of buying this game on consoles (Switch version) after beating it many times on mobile using my phone and a tablet.Yeah, I made the mistake of buying this game on consoles (Switch version) after beating it many times on mobile using my phone and a tablet. The reason why I bought it on consoles was because the game's developer kept deleting the cloud save data. Apparently they kept forgetting to pay for their servers.

    And I had already unlocked everything in the game on mobile. All endings, collectibles, etc. But after the 2nd time that it happened, I waited for the game to go on sale on console. With the expectation that keeping my saves wouldn't be an issue on that platform.

    Well, keeping my save data safe on consoles was the least of my problems. Turns out that the game itself feels broken on consoles.

    The first thing that I noticed, was that the graphics were mostly the same. Except that the console version had more decorative stuff in the background. Nothing to write home about.

    But then I started to notice how the AI of the janitors was messed up.

    On mobile, if a janitor is on another floor he will rarely come after you UNLESS you do something dumb such as running around or making too much noise.

    However, on consoles if the janitor is on another floor he will come out of nowhere and start chasing after you for no reason at all. On mobiles, the janitor will only walk into an area or room if they hear a noise coming from it or if you left the lights on or have the door wide open. They will only ever get suspicious and begin to investigate if something seems off to them.

    But on consoles, they will randomly walk into a room seemingly for no good reason at all. For instance, I was inside one of the bathrooms looking for secret items. The lights were off and I was using the lighter. I had shut the door close of the bathroom after entering it. I was making absolutely no noise. Reading a document that I had just found in there. Suddenly I begin to hear the janitor running up to my location. He's coming from another floor. I quickly hid inside one of the stalls and saw the janitor running into the bathroom. I was thinking to myself "what the hell, game?!? What did I even do to call his attention here? It makes no logical sense!" Now let's move on to the boss battle at the new building. And I'm talking about the boss battle in the dance room where you have to place the speakers on certain spots on the floor.

    In the mobile version, the speakers are easy to pick up. You place the cursor on them, press the screen and you are now carrying them. You moved them over the designated spots and they'll automatically drop into place. You're done!

    But in the console version, the action for picking up and dropping off the speakers is just garbage. Here, you have to navigate an extremely tiny cursor to hover over the detection boxes of the speakers. If the cursor is not inside that small detection box (its the size of a tennis ball) then you're screwed. Now imagine having to do that while the boss is shooting at you some projectile attacks. Attacks that unlike happens in the mobile version, they WILL TOPPLE OVER ALL THE SPEAKERS INSIDE THE ROOM REGARDLESS OF WHERE THE ATTACK HAPPENS WITHIN IT.

    So on consoles not only do you have to watch out for those projectile attacks to prevent yourself from dying. But you also have to watch out for the boss from knocking over the speakers with said attacks. While you're fighting with the finicky controls. Controls that are incredibly unresponsive, BTW. You'll find yourself pressing the action buttons several times to pick up or drop the speakers. And its mostly because the tiny cursor is not hitting that small detection box.

    Now, the game on consoles is beatable. The problem is that its NOT FUN. Which is a very BAD thing.

    Why is that bad? Because White Day is a game that requires you to repeatedly replay it over and over again to unlock different endings and other stuff.

    And because the game is not fun or enjoyable, replaying the game feels like one of the worse chores imaginable. There is just no incentive to replay this game with such trash controls and broken AI.

    Anyway, I'm just posting this here to hopefully prevent some other player from the mobile version of White Day to ever consider buying the console versions. Don't do it! There is a good reason why the developer, studio Sonnori, hasn't produced anything worth a damn ever since they made this game.

    By the way, the developer is not going to fix the issues with the console version. Because on mobiles, I previously tried to have the devs fix the save data issue. And wrote them about it several times. And they never replied back. And after consulting the matter with Google support, they told me that the devs were not responding to their inquiries about the issue either. They just don't care.

    So yeah, avoid this version unless frustrating gameplay is something you crave.    … Full Review »
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