I played “Days Like a Nightmare” by 727 Not Hound after (machine translating) this interview with the creator of Exit8 where they mentioned it as an interesting horror game they’d been inspired by recently.
It’s basically (as the description says) a mixture of deductive reasoning logic puzzles & horror action. It borrows the FNAF formula of using incrementing days as a way to escalate difficulty by increasing the amount of long-term things to hold in memory while also piling tension through periods of quicker stress.
I like playing it. The strongest part by far is the overall aesthetic, there’s little dialogue and the game is covered with an extremely grainy black and white filter. Most written text is filtered through formal euphemism, and there’s an unsettling stress in the dehumanization being unacknowledged. There’s a good sense of visual design in looking at the entire frame instead of divorcing that from it’s component parts. It has a specific tone. And is graciously short and inexpensive.
But I have to admit, I kinda turned against this when I looked at later games from the dev & they all disclosed using AI assets.
First of all it’s messed up that High on Life doesn’t have this disclaimer. So I appreciate the honesty since, unless someone catches you, most people are basically incentivized to lie about this. Although I don’t get the impression that 707 Not Hound’s (primarily Japanese) audience really cares.
And this specific game doesn’t use AI assets. But I do feel less disposed to perceive the art practices behind it generously because of the later use of AI assets. The implied indifference to specificity and care for the art filling the frame is a negative.
In a specific case in Days Like A Nightmare, the way the game revolves around dehumanizing & turning into logical problems these 3D models that evoke things like Abu Ghraib was striking to me.
But there’s also a big gameplay component of using a “charm gun” to shoot 3D clown faces that fly through the walls (“hallucinations”). The ambient/looping ramble dialogue soundscape and music is thematically whole initially, but later devolves into like, creepy musicbox.mp3.
I mean, those clowns did jump scare me, so I can’t call it a total failure, but it reflects the same lack of detail as the AI use. And it’s disappointing to find an interesting independent developer and then have interest in that potential/their work sapped by proof they likely haven’t outgrown a large weakness in their practice.
Conversely, if they didn’t use ai assets in something new they made, I’d interpret that as a sign of growth & be interested. But as of now, it’s just kind of a bummer.
devil’s advocate sidebar
Hypocritical to find this by machine translating, and then call them out for machine processes? I wouldnt blame someone for machine translating an inaccessible game, and if the game was dialogue-light, I’d probably trust they formed a mostly accurate analysis of it. Isn’t it privileged to call out minor asset generation just because its the artist making a choice about the place of their overall time/labor rather than the audience ? no. kermitsip.jpg
