White Day: A Labyrinth Named School (2017)

White Day is, apparently, one of the most popular horror games to come out of Korea. It's a game I've seen around a lot over the years without ever being totally sure exactly what it is. In fact, I'm still not totally sure! From what I can tell, the original White Day came out in 2001 and became a sort of cult classic. This version is a remake from 2015 (I think, this is where I'm a little confused as I've seen several dates for it, probably varying by platform release, but I'm not sure) that aimed to be pretty faithful to the original, touching up the graphics but overall maintaining a lot (probably too much) of the original. To further muddy the waters, apparently there was a Korea-only remake in between these in 2009 on mobile. While I didn't play any of the original, I expect the biggest mistake was aiming to be too faithful to frankly outdated gameplay, which I'll get into plenty below. Still, there's a lot about the game I simply enjoyed a lot and while it could be a chore to deal with at times, this is such a cool game to see from so far back. Further, this game was undoubtedly a big inspiration for The Coma and The Coma 2, the latter of which I enjoyed a ton. I also wouldn't be surprised if it provided inspiration for Detention which features at least one puzzle I could see being a callback to this and in other ways is a 2D adaption of a very similar setting and layout.

I'll start with the bad that will likely stop a lot of players in their tracks: the game features a frankly quite poorly-designed pursuer enemy in the form of the school janitor. There are multiple janitors throughout the different sections of the school you come across but they function the same and if they see you, they will relentlessly chase you with a bat to beat the shit out of you for being in the school after hours, ya know, normal janitor stuff. You run slightly faster than the janitors so you can outrun them but only just barely, meaning you need to be able to first get a lead, break line of sight, then find a place to hide. The game can be fairly generous with its hiding places and the janitor won't see you crouching behind a student's school desk, despite it being not remotely solid, but the janitor's speed and the confined hallways make it very difficult to break line of sight quickly to even get in a hiding spot. As well, the nature of the school environment is such that there are tons of dead-ends that you can get easily stuck in. Even on Normal, it doesn't take many whacks from the bat to kill you and the autosaves are pretty rare, relying on (thankfully abundant) consumable items to save instead. The other issue is that the AI for the janitors doesn't feel at all tweaked to make for a better gameplay experience. They'll often loiter right around where you are or where you need to be, preventing you from coming out to look for items or solve puzzles in the spot you need to be because the janitor simply won't fuck off, by random chance. I multiple times would hide somewhere and just go make coffee or something in hopes he'd have moved on by the time I got back, which can take a long while. It's weird to say so, but while the janitor was almost the only threat in the game, I think it might've actually been a better game if you could just turn him off (which I heard there's a mod for on PC) or make him way less present because he kind of ruins the game and from reviews I've read, he's made a lot of people quit entirely. This is probably especially common because the first stretch of the game in which you deal with him, it's tight hallways with few branches or few places to lose him, making it one of the most difficult encounters really early on. Once you get the hang of listening for him and understanding how he works, the game is much more playable, but it still feels more frustrating than it should.

But once you get past that, there's a pretty fun mystery and puzzle horror game with an at-times silly but engaging narrative. You control a high school student who, creepily, decided to steal his crush's diary and after a change of heart has broken into the school at night to try and replace it. Naturally, said crush, the super popular So-Yeong, happens to be in the school after hours, along with a small cast of other girls who all encounter some strange supernatural happenings. There's actually a kind of weird mini-dating sim allowing you to choose different dialogue options to try and warm up to or distance yourself from the different girls throughout the game, though it never really goes anywhere. Given there are multiple endings, I expect these choices affect that. The dialogue could also be really weird when the characters have clearly just confronted supernatural terrors but then just slide right back into being gossipy and dramatic as if it's just another day as school. Teenagers amirite.

I found the puzzle gameplay to be pretty fun. It's standard puzzle horror stuff, you find keys and key items that unlock different areas or solve problems that allow you to progress further in the story or discover codes and clues to help you figure out puzzle solutions. There are a few "timed" sections in which you have a time limit and have to quickly find the solution to a problem or it's game over. The game could be pretty difficult with its puzzles as some of the clues were kind of obscure. But one I found I couldn't do without looking it up since it required knowledge of a Chinese character I don't know, which was a little frustrating, though the rest of the game is doable, if puzzling, with just your English translation. The only really annoying part was again, the janitor getting in the way of progress throughout the game. A good pursuer can be effective but in case it was unclear, this was a pretty poor implementation of the concept and while I already ranted on that, it bears mentioning that it also interfered with an otherwise fun exploration of the spooky school grounds.

Another thing the game is known for is that it has a ton of optional content. I got the "Hyacinth" ending, but there were lots of other ones with a results page that frighteningly tracks getting each ending on each difficulty, which would take forever. But in addition to multiple endings, there are a slew of optional ghost stories throughout the game that run parallel to the main plot and are there only if you're up for the side content. I believe some even require doing during a New Game+ run. I didn't encounter a ton of these as just getting through the game itself was kind of tough, but I do think it's a really cool idea and I appreciate that, from what I read somewhere, they have continued to add to and fine-tune the game over the years even apart from the multiple remakes of this apparently rather beloved title. Of course, I can't help but add in my snark that it's shocking they've continued to update the game while leaving the busted janitor mechanic alone, but ah well, I do still think the continued support is really cool to see.

All in all, I dunno, this game just won me over despite the fact I think the core gameplay is marred by some pretty tremendous flaws. I really enjoyed the setting and atmosphere, despite the barebones graphics, even for 2015. Even though the game could be frustrating, I mostly blew through it in a day—on Halloween in fact—and had a hard time putting it down. I'm not sure I'd feel up to replaying it to look into the optional content and other endings, but like The Coma 2, this game is really selling me on Korean horror games, despite my limited exposure to the sub-genre.

Spooktober Game #15 Complete!

So I made it and funnily enough, even though I wasn't holding myself to a midnight deadline, the final trophy popped at 11:59 pm. This game has a lot of problems and could be frustrating but I really liked a lot about it too, one of those games that won me over despite its issues.

Happy Halloween, Grouvee! Hope everyone has had a lovely spooky month and night! I'm really looking forward to writing up reviews for all the games I blasted through this month, it was a great time.

Originally released in 2001, White Day is a first-person horror game where your utterly helpless character is forced to complete puzzles while being hunted.

Sound familiar?

Nine years before Frictional Games would release Amnesia, this game did basically the same thing, complete with a mental health mechanic. It was almost a full decade ahead of its time (it's worth noting that Frictional Games' Penumbra series actually did have combat, so it took them a few tries to nail down their idiomatic style), and going back to it feels like the video game equivalent of finding a version of Hamlet written in ancient Greek.

Sadly, White Day had an intersting set of mechanics that's let down by their implementation. Unlike in, for instance, Soma, the janitors you have to avoid are placed in very linear environments, which makes avoiding them an extremely passive process. There are no sprawling levels or alternate routes to take, and the janitors are so easily alerted that the optimal solution is just to hunker down in a darkened classroom until their AI arbitrarily takes them far enough from your current position that they won't hear you opening the doors. The game also does not do a great job communicating when the janitors are active versus when they are not, so I ended up getting funneled into a room through a cutscene then cornered inescapably by the janitor I hadn't ever seen in that particular level. The game does a decent job at building tension in its gameplay, but even just a couple hours in tension was giving way to tedium and frustration.

It doesn't help that the story doesn't feel like it fits. The characters are written like teenage archetypes, and the horror just stops whenever they're talking to each other. The first boss is a giant tree spirit that you kill with acid and pesticides, and frankly after beating it through quick time events (which almost killed me because they came so far out of left field) it's a little bit hard to feel like the janitors are a real threat.

I only got a couple hours into the game, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt, but what I saw was an interesting piece of gaming history. One that showed not only that some ideas are older than we think, but also that it can take a couple refinements before those ideas really shine.