Daylight: Procedurally Generated Psychological Horror on PS4

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Daylight: Procedurally Generated Psychological Horror on PS4

E3 is upon us, and Zombie Studios is ready to scare the PlayStation community when Daylight comes to PlayStation 4 early 2014.

Daylight: Procedurally Generated Psychological Horror on PS4

A couple months ago, we flew out to PAX East with a pre-alpha build of our latest game Daylight. When you show your game off for the first time, you really aren’t sure what people will think! The entire weekend we would watch curious gamers walk up to Daylight. After a brief tutorial we’d just sit back and watch – anxiously waiting to see what would happen. Over and over we saw people jump, scream, yell, and one person even ripped off their headphones, took a couple steps back, and looked right at us as if they saw a ghost. Right then and there we knew we had something special. Now we are excited to share that with our fans on PS4!

For those that might not have heard of Daylight, it’s a procedurally generated psychological horror game. This means each time you start the game, the entire world will be different; from the layout of the level, the location of items you find, and, most importantly, the encounters you stumble into. You will never have the exact same experience twice. As fans of the horror genre know, once you see a scare you never get that same feeling again. That is what we set out to solve with Daylight: give fans a way to be scared each and every time they play it.

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For those fans who enjoy all the technical things, you will be happy to hear that Daylight has been built using Unreal Engine 4. We have been working with Epic and Unreal Engine for years, and when we got our hands on Unreal Engine 4, we started prototyping out some ideas, which quickly evolved into what is now Daylight. Being a small studio, Unreal Engine 4 has allowed us to make a game with next generation gameplay and graphics, taking advantage of all the power of PS4.

Bringing Daylight to the PS4 was something we always had in mind, and after PAX East, the attention Daylight received from fans, press, and even publishers greatly exceeded our expectations! It seemed we had touched a nerve. We started talking with Atlus and we are now happy to announce that they will be publishing Daylight and will help us bring it to the PS4 globally in early 2014.

So check out our E3 trailer and screenshots above, and be sure to go to our website, follow us on Twitter @PlayDaylight, and Facebook for all the latest news.

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58 Comments

16 Author Replies

  • Greatness Awaits

  • Really excited for this. Does this have Vita remote play functionality? If so I will be so happy. Being scared under the covers!

    • We are looking into all the features the PS4 has to offer, but right now nothing confirmed about remote play.

  • This is a pretty cool idea for the horror genre. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.

  • Looks like the average PS3 commercial.

  • That sounds really cool, I hope you guys can pull it off.

  • Pretty promising.

  • :insert usual “please bring to Vita” statement here:

  • Step 1) Turn Vita volume up high
    Step 2) Plant Vita under parents bed
    Step 3) Play game on PS4
    Step 4) Enjoy the screams nearby

  • Very interesting, I’m confusing Daylight and Dying light. Anyway looking forward for more infos

  • “Daylight” and “Dying Light”. That’s not gonna be confusing for people.

  • Can’t wait to buy this disc based title at a participating retailer and play it on my awesome OFFLINE PS4! eh Sony? ;)

    You better not goof up on this. 3 days!

  • Nice,i love games style Siren.

  • Scary :O great game :)

  • GhostBoosterver1

    I’m not satisfied i, you have to do more if you want me sony

  • Perhaps Daylight and Dying Light’s PR department’s should get in touch with each other.. lol

  • Can you guys tone down the Chromatic abberation..

    it’s a bit too powerful.

  • Looks like a promising game, I love the game atmosphere’s creepy vibe.

    Looking forward to more details in the near future. :)

  • i was waiting for a good horror game for too long and i think this is the answer i can’t wait to see more am already hooked

  • I love the concept of horror that is no predictable. I am also glad that this title is coming to the PS4 because it seemed intriguing when it was first announce. I am already a buyer of this and a supporter of the free to play Blacklight when it comes out it.

  • Too big a chicken to play horror games or watch horror movies, but best wishes anyway.

  • like Most games this gen it for me will all come down to how the used games work. If i buy this game new will it be able to be sold (by me) therefore giving it value after i buy it and not just an other Frisbee in my house. When i buy or collect games if you will. i only collect things that are of value after i buy them. The best example i can think of right now is like this : you would not buy a house or car if YOU could never sell it for what you wanted and not what some other person that wants to make a profit tells you its worth. Change is ok and i am all for it but not all steps are in the right direction. So if it is like xbox and there policy ……. no matter how awesome this game looks and it does look awesome i will just have to admire it from afar because i refuse to support the change.

  • Please drop the chromatic aberration, or at the very least, include an option to disable it.

    That effect belongs in cut scenes, not in gameplay.
    Gameplay should simulate human eyes, not a camera.

  • @21 your analogy is horrible. A video game doesn’t nearly equate the value or necessity that a house or car does. While I definitely don’t think used games should be “locked until a license is bought”, to cry about a game being worthless to you if you can’t resell it? Puh-lease. Maybe you shouldn’t be gaming then.

  • @22 It’s called stylistic direction. Don’t like it? Don’t play it.

  • are you still showing Blacklight: Retribution at E3 ???

  • I love horror games, especially ones that are more about environment and mood, not action all the time (like what Resident evil has turned into) ..

    IF this game takes the silent hill style environment approch, which from the video is hinting at, then I will buy the game day 1!!

    I can’t wait!!!

    • We look at horror more along the lines of a thriller keeping you on the edge as well as an old fashion scare. Daylight doesn’t have weapons, so the tension is pretty high.

  • Nice game! My favorite genre is horror, so anything the likes of Resident Evil/Silent Hill will be right up my alley.

    • Well Daylight doesn’t have weapons, but we have all played a lot of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Amnesia, and have staff that worked on F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2, Condemned, Condemned 2, Saw & Saw 2 currently working on Daylight! Long history of playing horror games and making them!

  • Haven’t played a good horror game since Silent Hill: The Room almost a decade ago. It’s a damn shame that most of them suck nowadays. If the reviews are great I’ll buy it. :)

  • Can’t wait to see more.
    The “throwing the headphones off” portion of a player reaction had me lol’ing!

    • It was an awesome moment at PAX East seeing this person all into the game and then something happened that startled them so much that they jumped away saying “Nope! Too scary!”.

      There were lots of other times something would happen and they would stop and have this look of “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”.

      It was a great weekend of watching people play and we are looking forward to sharing these experiences with the PlayStation 4 community!

  • I’ve been waiting for a new horror game since PS3 had few games of that genre & some weren’t scary or a certain series took the action/horror toll. My only exceptions were Siren: Blood Curse, Dead Space, Condemned, & Bioshock.

    I’m looking forward to see more on Daylight.

    • We actually have staff from F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2, Condemned, Condemned 2, Saw & Saw 2 working on Daylight!

  • Well seeing as remote play is mandatory for all ps4 games i guess playing this on my vita while sitting on my bed. Dont dissapoint us, we were all promised to able to do this, so i and a lot of people are eaggeraly expecting to do so.

  • Posted this on our Blog (EU) in response to another user asking why it has a compass on a phone. Will post it here as this dude is responding. Wondered if anything like this was planed?

    “Writing that makes me wonder if the PS4 version will use the DS4 like a smartphone.
    The speaker will be used to alert the player of calls and texts, and do a No More Heroes and patch the call through it.
    And after seeing a video of track pad in use, it’ll work great as a 1:1 input of the phones touch screen.

    And thinking back to the Feb presentation, they showed off a community page were players could see what you are playing, and it had a message board. It would be funny if those messages came up on the phone and you had to respond to them as you were playing.”

  • A cool suspense thriller, will have to get more info on this. E3 can’t get here fast enough.

  • A genuine horror game. Good! I’m excited. This might be the reason I buy a PS4. I remember buying the Nintendo Wii because Fatal Frame 4 was coming. Turns out, it never got shipped to America.

    Now, I’m interested that you guys are calling it a psychological horror. This means (to me) that you aren’t going to be pulling the over the top jump out of the closet abloogy woogy woo stuff. Get inside my head, make me scared! Don’t go all Resident Evil on us. (Which is a good game, it’s just not scary.) Siren, Fatal Frame, Silent Hill 1-3, it’s all about atmosphere and dread! There is a reason why Japanese have all the good horror games.

    • While everyone likes a good solid BOOO every once in a while, the best way to build that is by tension and atmosphere, which is something we are building with Daylight.

  • OH! Amnesia! Can’t forget that! And reading all other stuff, I love hearing that you have some people from the FEAR and Condemned series, but I got to let those guys know, FEAR 1, and Condemned 1 were the best ones. Condemned 2 was fun and creepy, but I lost the scare feel when I learned how to shout enemies to death. (Whaaaaaat??) Suspension of disbelief is critical. But I’m sure you guys know this, and how difficult of a balancing act it is to make a true horror game. Honestly, I believe horror to be the hardest type of games for people to make correctly.

  • So glad to see Zombie Studios doing this. I burned so many hours years ago on Spec Ops Rangers Lead The Way. I also evaluated the canceled Zombie Rogue Warrior project and witnessed the greatest underwater animations ever with some never before done combat mechanics. Really wished they would have let you guys keep that. Truly stoked to see Zombie on the PS4.

  • Will this be coming to retail? Or is it a downloadable title. Nice to see that you guys got that spike trailer in. I heard that they were thinking of cutting it. Good on Atlus for supporting you guys.

  • I loved what it looks like on pc so I am soooooo glad you guys are putting the game on ps4
    . Now I pray you guys optimize for the PS4 to make it as smooth as possible.

  • Don’t care personally about it, but it’s nice to see more PS4 support coming.

    • Hopefully we can change your mind. It is going to be a pretty awesome game if I don’t say so myself!

  • Looks like this game has future….did you said no weapons?…that just got me excited….eager to see if its real horror….the only scary game is Fatal Frame…if you guys can pull something like that then I’m up for it….btw are those graphics in the screenshots PS4 graphics?…if it is then I bet this game will be multiplat…multiplat games are really weak in graphics aspect…looks like that as it was on the PS3…exclusives will have the task to blow us away.I’m not a graphics whor* just saying.Because I’m yet to see an impressive multiplat. game on PS4(in graphics aspects).

    • Daylight currently have no weapons. The game is about exploring the world, not about combat. The PS4 version is going to look awesome!

  • @ 20 lisatsunami – Cant help but laugh at your comment haha…sorry but everytime I read or hear the word chicken used as synonymous to fear I just laugh very hard.Remembers me of Arkham City where the goons use the word “chicken” frequently and its very funny.

  • I really like the idea, the only problem now is that it will take me longer to be able to play it, you know, PS4 cost money, videogames too, but PS4 is more money, ha!
    Anyway, you have one sold here.

  • @Collin
    When you say there are no weapons, does that mean this is more of a stealth horror game?

    p.s. EU needs some replies too ;)

  • LandmineSalesman

    looks interesting will check it out for sure.

  • Wonder who the stalker is at 0:37 :-)

  • Zombie Studios, you and you alone is holding the last spark of life in the Survival Horror genre. I have been longing for so long to hear/read news of someone willing to bring this genre out of the abyss and set it at the top in all its glory. I’m counting on you to deliver this and more. Make it so that the reason I buy the PS4 is to play Daylight.

  • Go to Google

    Search “Let’s Get FlatOut Head On PS Vita Compatible”

    Click on the first result.

    Sign the petition please.

    Thank you

  • Being an old horror fan (movies, litterature, video-games), I can’t help but feel excited about Daylight. The thought of exploring, unarmed, those creepy settings makes me shiver!
    Very interested!

  • LOOKS KILLER ^5 ( No Pun Intended )

  • PrimeroIncognito

    Nice teaser. I like it.

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