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"This was our first big experience. Shit happens." - FNTASTIC
The Day Before
The Day Before was an Unreal slop post-apocalyptic open-world "MMO" zombie survival game developed by FNTASTIC and published by Mytona. It was priced at $40. It was one of the lowest-rated games on Steam in history, a title usually reserved for the likes of War of the Three Kingdoms or the review bombed Overwatch 2 after it was added to the platform.
It was also given the honor of being rated at an unfathomably rare score of 1.0/10 by IGN given to only a scant few games, mostly shovelware.
"How did it go so wrong that even those dog shit game journalists gave it a 1?" you may ask, well keep reading and you'll find out.
On January 29, 2021, the first trailer for the game released on IGN's YouTube channel. It showcased stunning graphics, car driving, voice chat, set in an abandoned city with a fitting atmosphere. It had looting, PvP and PvE combat, dynamic weather and crafting. Pretty much what you'd expect from a modern MMO, the whole nine yards and the dream for those who wanted an online zombie survival game. The only missing modern mechanic was base building.
Now, even a monkey after a lobotomy (Basically you, baj reader) would understand that this was a cherry picked, pre-rendered, scripted trailer. Not that it excuses it, because that did something: It set insanely high expectations.
The trailer itself spread like a wildfire to the joy of Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev, the two co-founders of FNTASTIC.
A month later, another video appeared on IGN's YouTube channel. It consisted of the brothers themselves sharing a few words about the game and thanking for the interest and cutting into a 2 minute clip of some more PvP combat footage on streets.
It's worth pointing out the subtle foreshadowing from one of the brothers:
"[...] a real breakthrough for the MMO survival genre!" - Eduard Gotovtsev
After that, there were a few more trailers and an extended gameplay video until April seen by millions of people. And then nothing until October, when they released another trailer via IGN on YouTube alongside the release date. It was set for June 2022. It even became the most wishlisted game on Steam at the time, blitzing through Stalker 2 and Starfield.
Then they used all that attention to shill a game they were making on the side, Prop Night, basically prop hunt but with a single hunter and a couple of mechanics stolen from Dead by Daylight. It was received rather well, forsen played it a couple of times too.
After that, we got a video on NVIDIA's YouTube channel in January showcasing the game's graphics in 4K and with RTX.
Wow, this game must be real if even NVIDIA is releasing a video like this, just look at the graphics and the gameplay!
- A clueless baj.
What followed is another few months of radio silence until May 2022. At this point the game was 1 month away from release but there was no new information from the developers. When the FNTASTIC team finally communicated, it was a delay to the release of the game. They wanted to switch from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Slop 5. Upgrading the game engine to a major version this far into the release candidate? Only short of forsen's genius.
This whole tomfoolery continued for more than a year, including another delay due to "trademark issues" because they never bothered to even trademark the title or people discovering that the game was made by "volunteers." And then even more trailers, more releases, more controversies, like shilling their Russian Microsoft Teams clone... You get the point.
There are multiple great documentaries on YouTube explaining more of the controversies before and after it released. If you're interested in more of the shit-show, here's a few recommendations:
- The Absolute Chaos of The Day Before by big boss
- The Day Before - A Scam to Remember by Skill Up
- The Most Popular Game on Steam Was A Massive Scam? by KiraTV
The Day Of
After all those shenanigans, the game finally released on December 7, 2023, over 1.5 years after the original release date. And of course, as an Early Access title for $40.
Forsen played it on day one, right after it released. The game opened up with a very promising 4 FPS cutscene. The main menu offered no settings and threw the player straight into the character creation.
The randomly generated character he got right away reminded people of Sodapoppin but he decided to keep modifying.
He settled for the "Ghost" class, though the trait bonuses likely didn't even work either way. He played around with the character creation screen for a few minutes before he settled for a dollar store Keanu Reeves.
The creation system wasn't advanced enough to warrant a long and careful session like with Avowed.
He then proceeded to delete the character because he realized he didn't want to call him "Forsen" and was only baiting for the classic "Don't steal my name" joke. To his surprise, nobody actually did.
He recreated his budget Keanu Reeves and called him "JustGetAHouse" as he does in all online games.
After some trouble with finding a server that wasn't full, he finally manages to enter the game.
That's right, the game wasn't actually an MMO, which was one of its main selling points. It was an extraction shooter based on servers which, at most, supported 32 players each.
He got into a short cutscene, some tutorial texts, talking to the NPCs, the usual tutorial stuff.
You could feel a bit of jank just from watching, but if you ignored the fact graphics were utter dog shit compared to the trailers, you wouldn't think much of it just yet.
He then was allowed to visit his land plot and Just Build A House... Or rather, choose a tent from a list of prefabs. This game had no actual base building, just presets and placing some furniture that you didn't have to craft, he was given a few freebies from the furniture store.
Having finished his modern art exposition, he headed back to Woodberry which is the game's hub, when he noticed something wrong about the first-person camera. It turned out he was a short king, and even more peculiar, the camera was located at his crotch.
Forsen finally understood that he might be in for a good time, but certainly not because the game was polished to perfection.
After receiving his lunch money and browsing the equipment store he headed out to his first adventure in New Fortune City. It was completely devoid of any zombies unlike what you'd expect from a zombie survival game. At most, you could hear some constant gunshots in the distance which could've very well been fake.
But he eventually encountered his first zombie.
Three headshots to kill a zombie and a 0.5 second lag between the last shot and it dropping dead? Not looking good.
However, he eventually spotted his next goal: Looting the nearby grocery store. That's where he found out about the worst mechanic in the game which he would have to constantly deal with - the sound alarms.
Let's say this... The chat wasn't enjoying them. It didn't matter to forsen, who couldn't hear them anyway because of his post-PUBG, stream sniper caused, tinnitus.
The range of the alarms was very large, easily one or two streets, which meant unless forsen ran a rather long distance, the alarm would be all he'd hear for the next 5 to even 20 minutes. It would even chain together with alarms set off by other players in different buildings. And of course, if you fail the minigame to disable them before they sound off, they can't be turned off. At all.
After more, mostly aimless, wandering around in search of quest items, forsen got himself into a bit of a situation. He caught the attention of both a player and a zombie, so he retreated to a building to hopefully quickly dispose of the zombie. Alas, he did not expect to be assaulted by a zombified Ryan Gosling who required 6 headshots from a rifle and 5 shotgun shells to die.
Not long after however, he dies to another player, losing everything he had on him and respawning in Woodberry, being forced to listen to air horns until he finished loading in.
The cycle repeats: Grab some equipment, go out, listen to endless alarms, wander around aimlessly, die to a player, back to Woodberry. He did at least kill someone on his second merry-go-round.
This continued for a few runs, until he eventually realized he had spent almost 3 hours and made zero progress, did not find any interesting loot, did not craft anything or didn't even manage to extract with his loot. Everything at constant 500+ms ping judging by the delay between shots and zombies dying.
The final nail in the coffin was dying to a player but trying to put it into words wouldn't do it justice, so check it for yourself below.
Notably, he did something he doesn't do too often afterwards - He checked user reviews on Steam only to learn about even more tomfoolery by the devs like them deleting all previous footage of the open world showcases. Apparently, he didn't even know it was a highly anticipated game with a long story behind it.
The Day After
The game only lasted 4 days, less than Concord and Highguard, though the servers themselves permanently shut down after 45 days, which is a month longer than Concord and exactly as long as Highguard.
Players were able to find heaps of pre-made assets from the asset store that were at best slightly altered and at worst just pasted in, which isn't inherently something wrong, unless your game is a blatant asset flip with almost a hundred assets put together willy-nilly. Even the city itself was just taken from a $300 "American cities" pack. You can read more on that in a subreddit thread on r/TheDayBefore.
Despite reportedly selling 200 thousand copies, half of them were refunded. The founders thus decided to close down FNTASTIC. The Day Beyond then got de-listed on Steam and Valve offered a full refund to anyone who bought the game, effectively resulting in FNTASTIC not receiving a single dime as Steam has a 30 day period before you can cash out your money as a game developer.
The icing on the cake? This now-deleted tweet from FNTASTIC:
"This was our first big experience. Shit happens."
- @FntasticHQ on Twitter, archived post on WaybackMachine
202X gaming I guess.