Published , by Sam Chandler
Published , by Sam Chandler
The Day Before develops are back. The team behind one of 2023’s biggest gaming stories wants to try and regain your trust as they continue developing games. In fact, you can support them right now on Kickstarter as they make their new game: Escape Factory.
On September 26, 2024, the developers behind The Day Before, Fntastic, took to social media to reveal that the company is coming back. In a post that begins, “Everyone deserves a second chance,” Fntastic linked to its site which housed a PDF that outlined the team’s new set of principles, a mission statement and vision, as well as revitalized branding.
A quick look at the PDF reveals principles like honesty, transparency, and professionalism, three tenants that anyone should be operating under anyway. Each of these sections provides a bit more detail on how Fntastic plans to do this including a promise of open communication regarding challenges without concealing details, offering open betas to gather feedback, and a goal to gather industry professionals to improve the “existing employees’ skills.”
The company has also revealed its new branding, which features “bold geometric design” not entirely dissimilar to Twitch’s purple branding. The PDF claims this new identity is a “strong declaration of Fntastic’s dedication to building trust.”
In case you’re wondering who Fntastic is, it is the company behind The Day Before. The game had garnered a lot of attention based on some extremely early trailers, but things started to look weird after the devs released a 10 minute gameplay trailer. The game had been presented as a post-apocalyptic survival game featuring zombies, survival crafting, and teamwork. What Fntastic delivered was something completely different.
Instead of a crafting survival game, players were treated to bug-riddled, asset-flipped extraction shooter. Players quickly blasted the game and claimed the company has misled consumers. The game was pulled from Steam and players were refunded. The game's Steam page still exists, although you can't actually purchase the game. It sits at an "Overwhelmingly Negative" rating on Steam.
“We deeply apologize to everyone for The Day Before and take full responsibility for what happened,” Fntastic writes in today’s post. Users have responded to the post en masse. One user has stated that they’ve not forgotten that this is the “same company that SCAMMED the gaming community.”
“You really need to get sued. I cannot believe you have the audacity to ask for more money after you scammed people. LIKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU,” writes another user. Fntastic replied to this one with, “how we scammed? We refunded all the money,” seemingly failing to realize that refunding money does not remove the fact that misleading practices took place.
If all of this sounds like a great idea, you can visit Fntastic’s Kickerstarter page or try out the demo for Escape Factory on Steam right now.