Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle

Daymare 1994: Sandcastle is a fun title that improves on almost all the issues from the original. It provides an excellent atmosphere and fun combat situations where you can use cryo abilities. It's not a perfect game, though, with some bad voice acting, really dark lighting, and being unable to dodge attacks leaves you open to strikes. Invader Studios will hopefully build on these qualities for the promised third instalment in the series.

The next entry to Daymare has arrived and pulls us back to 1994 for Operation Sandcastle. Investigate what happened in a mysterious facility that's gone dark. With improved gameplay, intense atmosphere and a frost new weapon, discover the horrors that are within Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle. Can you survive?

As a newer studio with not a lot of funds to go around, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is an improvement over the first title. I was able to tell the passion they had for Resident Evil throughout while still staying true to their own vision.

Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle obviously can’t compete with the likes of the Resident Evil series; it simply doesn’t have the same polish or scope of any of the modern remakes. Considering it’s made by a small studio and is delivered at a budget price, however, there’s a lot to be applauded here. This is a massive step up from Daymare: 1998 in many ways, resulting in a survival horror experience that genre fans are likely to lap up despite its numerous faults. And if Invader Studios gets to make another game and can improve on the formula yet again, you can be sure we’ll be paying attention.

Enter this pitch-black assignment at your own risk, knowing beforehand that it’s not Resident Evil, but it’s not without its merits, thanks to a clever ice weapon that sadly deserved a more enjoyable combat system to go with it.

Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is an over-the-shoulder survival-horror game very much in the vein of certain Resident Evil titles, acting as a prequel to Daymare 1998. The original game was actually born from an independent group’s efforts to try and remake Resident Evil 2 before Capcom would go on to announce their own, leading the developers, now known as Invader Studios, to take the work they’d completed and rework it into an original game concept.

Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle wears its Resident Evil inspiration on its sleeve, but technical and design issues mean that it will firmly remain in its inspirator’s shadow.

When it was released a few years ago, the original (awfully named) Daymare was a bit of a mess. Starting off as a fan remake for Resident Evil 2, it shifted gears to its original IP after Capcom decided they wanted to do their own instead, and it paid off. Daymare, however, continued development as its own thing, and I was rooting for it, although in my review I wasn’t kind to it. The lacklustre story, frustrating gameplay, and crappy visuals lead for an experience that wasn’t pleasant to...