The Day Before’s Dev Blog Video Really Makes It Look Like A Real Game Now

gameranx.com:

Fntastic has finally released their developer blog for The Day Before, and, well, it looks like a real game.

Fntastic Communications Team Member Dana Soltangazinova took us through six minutes of a journey that the studio went through in making their open world survival shooter, including details on what they actually focused on, and what the game used to be like.

So, Fntastic started work on The Day Before in 2019. In its pre-alpha state, they already knew they were going to make an open world survival shooter, but it still looks very different than it does today. The game had a rural winter setting, reminiscent of Alaska or Hokkaido, and it had a cartoonier style.

The Day Before already had stats like hunger and energy, and it already had the looting mechanic, tied to every home and building you came across. There were also vehicles, implying a bigger world, and also zombies, of course.

In 2020, Fntastic made huge changes. Dana describes a desire to ‘win a place in the hearts of as many other people as possible’, which sounds like coded language for, they saw gamers wanted realistic graphics. They changed not only animations, but sound and lighting design.

So, as you may be able to tell from our preview pic, the change is literally night and day for this game. The cartoony style for a video game allows a game studio to simplify many aesthetic details. It isn’t exactly simpler or easier, but it does mean the game’s appeal will depend a lot on whether that style is appealing to many players or not. Case in point, the difference in visuals in Overwatch and Battleborn.

Changing to a realistic style means that Fntastic now has to worry about producing a sense of verisimilitude in the game. Even the grittiest video games