Game: A Day Without Me
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Action, Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers | Publishers: Gamecom Team | Silesia Games
Age Rating: US Teen | EU 16+
Price: US $5.99 | UK £5.39| EU € 5,99
Release Date: March 11th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Silesia Games
Made by Indonesian developer Gamecom Team, A Day Without Me is an isometric puzzle adventure game where you play as a lone survivor of a mass disappearance on earth. A Day Without Me has previously been released on PC via Steam in June 2020.
A Young Boy, or Is It?
You play the part of a young boy, at least I think its a boy! You wake in your bedroom to hear a horrible continuous beeping noise. Your first job is to find out where the noise is coming from. After investigating the rooms in the house you finally discover the noise is coming from a computer. You’ll need a password to log in to the computer to turn the noise off. This is the first puzzle in the game and believe me when I say you will be happy you turned the noise off as it’s terrible.
As the game continues you find the streets are devoid of life and are filled with vehicles turned over and splashes of blood everywhere. When you first set off on your adventure, you wonder to yourself “what happened here?” Shortly after that, you’ll probably be wondering why you would bother finding out what has happened here, much like I was.
All Alone
Now let me explain why I say that… this game has no words, no text, the character you control constantly looks like he is about to fall over on to his nose. There isn’t any music, just atmospheric sounds to give the impression that you’re alone in the world, which indeed you are! The games intro, nor the exploration of your house or the surroundings explains to you what has happened. There isn’t any on-screen text, no left behind letter, or any kind of information where to search for answers. In total, the guidance for the player throughout the game is very limited, in fact, its virtually non-existent.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not asking for my hand to be held the whole way through the game. I’m an experienced gamer who has played this genre of game loads of times. I know to go exploring to find out what has happened. After all the theme of the game is you’re left alone in the world, and it does a reasonable job of making you feel you are completely alone. But for new players, this would not be a game I would recommend as you are basically left to your own devices.
Clueless
The game has plenty of puzzles to throw at you, but none of them is particularly difficult to solve or brain taxing. Most of the puzzles can be solved by examining the space around you and looking for clues. Some of the puzzles you won’t even know are puzzles until the character steps on them. You see, your character dies if they come into contact with fire, only half the time you don’t see the animation of the fire until its too late. Fire means instant death to your character and you start again at the last save point after you watch an On Fire cutscene.
Given the number of puzzles in this game, you will quite often have to go around an area without any clear direction because there is no minimap feature or a bigger map in the game. It’s also hard to piece together any sense of a cohesive narrative because the puzzles and chase sequences don’t seem to have any sort of meaning attached to them.
Visuals and Controls
A Day Without Me is full of pastel-coloured hues, with a low-poly art style. Splashes of blood are dotted around the areas, to give the impression of horror. I did find that since there is not too much contrast between the pastel colours of one object and another, some objects could be hard to distinguish.
The game is controlled using the joy-cons, they work fine when they work at all that is. Both my joy-cons continually disconnected every few minutes from my Switch while I was playing A Day Without Me. I’ve had this happen before with other games, maybe once in a game, as I’m sure everyone has. But this happened continually every two minutes which can only lead me to believe the game was responsible in some way.
Conclusion
A Day Without Me is a weird game where you stumble around clueless with little idea of what’s happening or has happened. The issue I had with the joy-cons continually disconnecting did not help in the least or lead to an enjoyable gaming experience. At the moment with this being one of the problems with the game I can’t recommend it.
Final Verdict: I Don’t Like It 