It’s also White Day‘s first great failing, as it plays like a rough draft of better games we’ve had since 2002. The stealth in White Day plays like a precursor to something like Amnesia players must avoid the janitors or risk death, and there is no combat to speak of. It’s an interesting setup that sadly doesn’t deliver what could have been an interesting allegory for the struggles of high school romance and the problems it can cause turns out to be little more than slight visual novel elements filled with uninspired characters, wrapped in monotonous gameplay. The gameplay from there revolves around avoiding the janitors and solving puzzles throughout the environment, broken up by visual novel-esque sequences where the player can make various choices when talking to the girls that will affect the ending. While sneaking into school one night he finds that he has been locked in with his crush and two other girls, as well as a duo of homicidal janitors and a few vengeful ghosts. White Day starts out simply enough, with a Korean high schooler looking to return his crush’s lost notebook, as well as give her a gift for White Day, Korea’s equivalent to Valentine’s Day. Sadly, while White Day: A Labyrinth Named School may have been influential when it first released, time has not been kind, leaving a game that is more of an exercise in frustration than terror. The obscure 2002 Korean horror game never got a proper western release, so when announced that it would finally be localized for modern consoles, I was absolutely elated. As a first person horror game in the vein of Amnesia and Outlast, White Day: A Labyrinth Named School has long occupied a similar space for me as Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose a classic horror game that many claim is one of the genre’s best but is hard to get a hold of. For years, I’ve wanted to get my hands on White Day.

A white day a labyrinth named school