Daymare 1994: Sandcastle is set to fill the gaps between Resident Evils

thesixthaxis.com:

2019 was a landmark year for survival horror as it saw the long-awaited release of Capcom’s stellar Resident Evil 2 Remake. When this title was met with glowing critical and player acclaim there were many think-pieces heralding it as the return of horror gaming. In truth, horror games have never gone away and gamers would do well to dig a little deeper than the AAA market for their scary fix. Later in 2019, Invader Studios released Daymare: 1998 – an indie survival horror that mostly drew attention due to its origins as a fan made remake of the aforementioned Resident Evil 2. While this version was shut down by Capcom as they worked on their own, Invader repurposed their work to create a game that was as close to the adventures of S.T.A.R.S as they could manage without litigation. When I reviewed it back at release it was difficult to get past its dated aspects, especially in light of the RE2 remake. It was clearly a labour of love, however, and there was plenty of potential to see.

Fast forward to 2022 and a demo for Daymare 1994: Sandcastle appeared which showed off a new prequel storyline and brand new player character, seemingly relocating the action to an iconic B movie location – Area 51. Since then, things have gone quiet at Invader aside from a couple of release date changes (a very familiar occurrence post-Covid). Until now; a new release date of August 30th has been set and a brand new demo build is available to play. I’ve delved back in and can report that the result feels a lot more polished than 1998 and looks set to be a worthy entry in the survival horror B team.

The new demo starts off in media res as you control Dalila Reyes, a new recruit to the H.A.D.E.S unit, who is about to have a very bad day… Okay,