Daylight, a zombie-themed first person survival horror game being made by Zombie Studios (how fitting) for the PC and PlayStation 4 is seeing its release date pushed back from April 8 to April 29, publisher Atlus announced. The reason? They’re making the game scarier.
“Let’s not mince words. First news you need to know about Daylight is that we had to delay the release date by several weeks,” said the developer. “Here’s the thing: the way Daylight is developed is completely different because of its procedural generation. In a lot of ways it really helped the team by streamlining the environment creation, but it’s taken extra time to make sure all the scare cues are properly implemented for maximum player effect.”
Atlus is cutting the price of Daylight for a limited time to reward would-be players for their patience. For two weeks after release on April 29, PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to download the title for $9.99, while non-subscribers can pick it up for $11.99. Steam pre orders from today until the 29th will set you back $9.99 and upon release will rise back up to its original $14.99 price tag.
Daylight puts you in control of Sarah, who awakens trapped in an abandoned hospital armed with just her phone and no idea of how she got there. She receives a call urging her to discover the secrets of the hospital and takes off in exploration. Her phone acts as a both a flashlight and a map, but has nothing else.
“You don’t have combat. You don’t have a gun. You don’t have anything. You literally have to run away when a Phantom is attacking you, and those things are really interesting,” creative studio head Jared Gerritzen explained.
The game will run on Unreal Engine 4 and play for about 25-30 minutes. However, it features a procedurally generated environment meaning that every time you start it up, it’ll be different. The hope is that gamers will play through several times to experience everything Daylight has to offer.
“We have so much content story-wise that it hopefully, whether the person manages to succeed to the end or not, will be an experience that they want to capture more of the story so they have to go back and replay, because each time you might be getting different story elements,” Daylight writer Jessica Chobot said. “And over the course of that time, depending on how long you decide to play and what you find, it opens up the concept of the world a little more, the backstory, what your involvement is in it, how you find yourself here and whatnot.”
“Different players will have a totally different experience,” Gerritzen said. “You’re essentially a rat in a cage, but the cage is an asylum and it’s scary as hell. You need to find your way out, and each time you do it it’s completely different.”