Following the footsteps of 2019’s Daymare 1998, Invader Studios released their newest game, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle. Read our review of the game to find out more about its gameplay and story, and see if it’s worth your while.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Review Overview
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Triple-A Level Art Direction Great Atmospheric Horror Elements
Challenging But Fair Survival Mechanics |
Extremely Lacking in Variety and Content Balancing Issues Lead to Frustrating Combat Subpar Animations and Voice Acting Puzzles are An Afterthought Expands World and Lore Poorly |
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Overall - 56/100
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle seeks to build on the world and mechanics of its predecessor, Daymare 1998, but falls short in most respects. Despite some mechanical improvements, the new elements offer little to the overall experience and, in some cases, actually diminishes it, resulting in a prequel inferior to the first installment.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Story - 7/10
The story adheres to sci-fi and horror tropes too much but is not poorly written. It offers enough intrigue and atmospheric storytelling to be compelling, though it is not groundbreaking.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Gameplay - 3/10
The game draws inspiration from the Resident Evil franchise but falls short in every aspect. It lacks variety in weaponry and enemy types, and progression remains slow, leading to a frustrating and dull experience.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Visuals - 8/10
The game impresses with its stunning presentation of the Groom Lake Incident, opting for a hyperrealistic aesthetic as opposed to its predecessor’s retro style. The game looks amazing, though the animations for the human character models betray its limitations.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Audio - 7/10
The game excels in using its soundtrack and audio to evoke the horror and danger of the setting. Much of the game’s dreadful atmosphere comes from their masterful sound design, though the voice acting could be improved.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Value for Money - 3/10
Even at the modest price of $29.99, this game lacks sufficient content to justify its cost. With only a 4-6 hour story mode and minimal side content in the form of unlockable concept art, there isn’t much left to do after finishing the game once.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Review: Just a Sum of Its Parts
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle ranges from mediocre to disappointing. Though it boasts amazing art direction, great sound design, a salvageable story, and somewhat likable characters, it commits the most egregious sin in all of game design: it is extremely dull.
The game’s limited arsenal and frustrating combat detract from the experience greatly, dragging much of the game’s better qualities down with it. Simply put, it is difficult to immerse yourself in the world and atmosphere the game is trying to build when its gameplay, the core of its existence as a videogame, is so poorly executed.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle falls shy of greatness, hampered significantly by its abysmal gameplay. With its main medium of expression so fundamentally flawed, the game cannot be anything more than just a sum of its parts.
Pros of Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle
| Things Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Got Right |
|---|
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Triple-A Level Art Direction Great Atmospheric Horror Elements Challenging But Fair Survival Mechanics |
Triple-A Level Art Direction
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle, in contrast to its predecessor, opts for a realistic, gritty aesthetic reminiscent of triple-A titles. Given the emphasis on the classic third-person horror shooter aesthetic in the previous game, the prequel's shift to a hyper-realistic feel aligns well with the trend seen in remakes of iconic titles. It’s especially notable in the Resident Evil series, which happens to be the game’s biggest inspiration.
The Extras menu showcases the developers' meticulous effort to enhance the game’s visual appeal, showing plenty of concept art for characters, levels, and monsters seen in-game. Amid a genre filled with generic, vaguely militaristic third-person shooters, this game stands out, maintaining its unique identity and aesthetic. Ultimately, this distinctive quality remains one of the game's strengths, contributing significantly to its charm and overall value.
Great Atmospheric Horror Elements
Horror as a narrative element is commonplace in gaming nowadays, with varying techniques ranging from cheap jumpscares to complex worldbuilding. Few games attempt and excel at atmospheric horror, however, as it is a more comprehensive and subtle technique that many developers expect their audience to gloss over. Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle excels at atmospheric horror, almost to a textbook quality.
Everything, from its sound design to the map of each level screams horror, forces you to second-guess every step you take. Things will go bump in the night as you traverse a supposedly abandoned research lab. You will pass by bodies strewn about the map, knowing full well that some of them will reanimate to attack you, just not which one and when. This ever-encompassing dread builds the game's atmosphere and does well to convey the feeling that you are always in danger.
Challenging But Fair Survival Mechanics
The game executes its survival elements well, providing you with just enough resources to get by without undermining the challenge of their scarcity. You are allowed some wiggle room when it comes to using your ammunition, but are still discouraged from spraying and praying. It straddles that crucial balance between challenging and frustrating that many survival games often cannot.
Alongside a well-balanced integration of survival mechanics, the game encourages creative resource usage, particularly with liquid nitrogen in the Frost Grip. Most of the smaller enemies can be executed while fully frozen using a certain amount of liquid nitrogen, forgoing the need for bullets. This is especially helpful if you are looking to conserve those bullets for more pressing situations. Overall, the game rewards good resource management, but still provides players a way to get by should they get a little too trigger-happy.
Cons of Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle
| Things That Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Can Improve |
|---|
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Extremely Lacking in Variety and Content Balancing Issues Lead to Frustrating Combat Subpar Animations and Voice Acting Puzzles are An Afterthought Expands World and Lore Poorly |
Extremely Lacking in Variety and Content
There really isn’t much to this game at all in terms of content across all respects. You start with two guns—a pump shotgun and an SMG—and these remain your only weapons throughout the game. Upgrades are available, but only if you find them in specific areas around the map. Since there’s no returning to areas you already visited after a certain point, these upgrades are easy to miss, and you might reach the endgame without any at all.
The game also only has three enemy types: Decoys, Mutated Decoys, and Sparkers. All encounters are a motley mix of these three enemies, making each one predictably uninteresting. Even the final (and only) boss, OGRE Helen, can’t be killed, only avoided until the final cutscene. The game has a run time of around 4-6 hours, but the combat goes stale within the first hour or so. By the end of the game, there was absolutely no thrill or excitement to be had and the story dragged on far beyond my interest.
Balancing Issues Lead to Frustrating Combat
To drive another nail in the proverbial coffin, the game balances each encounter poorly, making it frustrating and boring. Each of the enemy types, including the ones that kill you instantly, are lightning-fast and take a modest amount of damage before dying. The Frost Grip, meant to counter their speed, is seldom deployable in time due to its gradual freeze effect.This can be upgraded in upgrade stations scattered around the map, but said upgrades counterintuitively make the Frost Grip worse as they offer new ways to spend liquid nitrogen without offering ways to replenish or conserve it.
Not only that, failing to spare some liquid nitrogen to destroy them completely will cause them to reanimate nearby bodies, making it nearly impossible to finish an encounter without using a liquid nitrogen consumable or spending an excessive amount of bullets.
This drastically lowers Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle’s value as a third-person horror shooter, as there are games with better combat systems that have just as much production value. Sad as it is to say, much of the game’s score will be dragged down by its abysmal gameplay, as great aesthetics and sound design alone do not make a good game.
Subpar Animations and Voice Acting
The game undeniably looks good, that much can be attested by the maps, character designs, particle effects, and enemy models. Unfortunately, especially on the cinematic side of things, both the animations and voice acting of the characters are below industry standards.
Slow and unnatural mouth movements, janky and robotic running animations, and stiff body animations during cutscenes all do much to undermine what would otherwise be a beautiful game. There are a few exceptions, but most of the voice work in the game needs improvement as well. The performances come out as stale and uninspired, barely clinging to the emotion evoked by the rest of the scene. These shortcomings are usually overlooked, but the game does not have enough good aspects to make up for it.
Puzzles are An Afterthought
For a game that wears its Resident Evil influences on its sleeve, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle really underperformed with the presentation and execution of its puzzles. They come off as forced and uncreative, unceremoniously pasted onto situations that really shouldn’t even have a puzzle.
And, again, the game commits the most egregious sin in game design in yet another aspect of its gameplay: the puzzles are incredibly boring. Except for a few that are downright unforgiving, most lack creativity and difficulty. Moreover, there are hardly any puzzles, with each major act having, at most, three. As a result, puzzles seem like an afterthought—just a mandatory element to uphold the Resident Evil facade but not something deserving of further development.
Expands World and Lore Poorly
This is a critique unique to Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle as it is a prequel to an established story. Generally speaking, when you create a sequel (or a prequel in this case), you must expand the established lore of the setting both the first and second story were a part of. Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle does this poorly, coming off as a game from a completely different setting with a “Daymare” logo tacked on to it.
Apart from a couple of namedrops in the post-credit scene and a few gameplay similarities, one would not be able to associate this supposed prequel with the events of the first game. While this might not be a dealbreaker for many players, the game already has several problems in its execution. Doing well in this aspect could have made it a good sequel, if not a good standalone game. Unfortunately, it achieves neither.
Is Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Worth It?
Definitely Not - Unless You’re Into Frustrating Gameplay and A Lot of Nothing
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle suffers from the symptoms of a great idea executed extremely poorly. The effort is commendable as the game still does have some higher points. The art direction, in particular, was exquisite, rivaling some of the best in the industry. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the game. Game mechanics carry much of a game’s value, especially for an action thriller game, and Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle dropped the ball.
There really isn’t much to this game, in more than one way, as its content is lacking in volume and quality. We cannot, in good faith, recommend this game to anyone. If your third-person horror shooter itch proves insatiable, we recommend you play its predecessor, Daymare 1998.
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Overview & Premise
Set four years before the events of Daymare 1998, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle delves into the story of the Groom Lake Incident from the perspective of Special Agent Dalila Reyes. As a member of H.A.D.E.S, a paramilitary group specializing in extractions and explorations, she and her team were assigned to investigate the Groom Lake Facility near Area 51 in light of a recent disaster called the Rachel Event.
In this brand-new prequel to the acclaimed Daymare 1998, players will go deep into the advanced research facility called CASTLE to unearth its many secrets and solve the mystery behind the Groom Lake Incident as it was presented in the first game. Fight through groups of electrified undead using the new Frost Grip to freeze them in their tracks. Question the morality of your actions as a complex story unfolds within Operation Sandcastle.
Game8 Reviews
Daymare:1994 Sandcastle Product Information
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| Title | DAYMARE: 1994 SANDCASTLE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 11, 2023 |
| Developer | Invader Studios |
| Supported Platforms | Playstation 5, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC |
| Genre | Third-person Shooter, Adventure, Survival, Horror |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | Mature 17+ |
| Official Website | http://www.invaderstudiosofficial.com/ |
