So I've just beaten the game (Which was short as fuck, but I'm glad) and it just ends. I'm guessing she was crazy or either a witch. I didn't really pay to much attention to the notes. I got to a point where I was so tired of the game. That I didn't care to read the notes anymore.

Anyway, this game felt so half-ass to me. The whole game got stupid repetitive, maze like levels were awful, cheap-ass scare moments loses the tension, and hearing Sarah saying ''is anybody there?'' over and over made me want to delete the game on the spot.

Like Siren: Blood Curse I have no intentions of playing this game again. I would rather play Amy aleast I somewhat enjoyed that game, but Daylight was just awful. Everything just felt like a drag, and it became a fucking chore to play.

Also didn't the character almost looked exactly like Alma from F.E.A.R at the end, like wtf?

There's a story? How does that work with it being procedurally generated?

Funny you've mention that. I guess the devs thought leaving half-ass notes everywhere would do the story justice, but all it did was make the game more uninteresting. I wonder how long it took the devs to make this game. I'll be damned if it was a year, it just can't be.

Apparently Jessica Chobot was the game's writer? So I guess that means she was responsible for the notes and the crazy doctor guy's comments you hear? And possibly conceived the story as a whole?

It seems she could use some practice.

I had no idea she was the writer for this game, wow just wow.

Anyone have an example of a short, procedurally-generated game that has a decent story?

Persona 3, Persona 4, Dark Cloud 2. They're also better games.

@minipato: None of those are short or randomly generated outside of dungeons. At least P3/4 aren't.

Okay, they're not short, but why should they be discounted because only their dungeons are randomly generated? You spend 90% of the time in those games in the randomly generated parts of it.

The only other example I can come up with is FTL, but I'd even hesitate to say that that game has as story more than it does a premise to hang random scenarios on. If not that, then no such game exists.

Yeah, the stories in P3 and P4 are linear, with some variance in detail dependent on player choice.

I don't know if I'd call the game particularly short, but I remember Baroque having a very interesting story and world. The details divulged are scant and have to be uncovered as the player advances and achieves various endings. It's a very grim, twisted story; one that pulls off what it desires with far more skill than what Daylight accomplishes, or at least tries to.

Well are we talking about procedurally generated levels or stories? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Daylight has only one beginning and one ending and the only variance in story is the order in which you find the notes.

The Yawhg is arguably a procedurally generated story, but it does not have procedurally generated levels or settings cause it's mainly a text adventure RPG.

Ok as for the story from what I understand

The girl is a daughter of a woman from family that was believed to be witches. Her mother committed suicide and the girl was institutionalized since something was wrong with her. She was often blanking out and stuff like that. The creepy guy on the phone is the doctor that tries to help her with her own demons. The ghost its representation of the hell she has created for herself since she is crazy. There was no abandoned hospital. Everything that happens in the play through is just in her head.

Risk of Rain actually has a great end-game quote.

"And so you leave, with everything but your humanity"

The devs should of added more depth to the story, but instead they went down the '' Battling your own demons scenario''. They could have done something interesting with witches in general, but instead we got this. Though it doesn't matter the whole game was a mess.

I thought it said her mother died giving birth to her? A lot of things in this game don't make sense. I supposedly grabbed all of the remnants and got the achievement but didn't grab "every single remnant" for that achievement, so I guess I am still missing something somewhere. I don't think this is the worst game ever but I am glad I only paid $10 for it.

The first day I played for about an hour, which was enough to get about halfway through the game. All the jump scares had some kind of music or building noise leading up to it, so they weren't shocking at all when they happened. Such as "the witch" making those dumb noises when she's behind you or following you. When I loaded the game again to finish the rest, things were quite a bit different. There were no music queues and no drums building up or anything like that. A couple of mattresses flipped over but that was about it. I just kept on and turned around a few different times to go the other way because I hit a dead end, and there she was...right in my face and the loud ass scream would trigger right when I saw her. It got me a couple of times...until it kept happening over and over and I realized, unless something changes again, that it doesn't really matter how random this game is when the scares don't really change.

Maybe this is a bad game. If the story isn't very good and you get used to what scares are going to happen and this all happens within 2 hours of gameplay, at most...this probably is a bad game.

If you're looking for other random games like this, then there is one in early access on steam called Paranormal. I think it's a better game, but still not amazing. It takes about an hour to get through it once but it all takes place in a small 2 story house. The Dev is active on the Steam forums, if you care about that. He seems to help with problems and take suggestions for the game into consideration. Edit: He just updated it a couple of weeks ago. It will, eventually, be more than just a house. He claims all DLC / updates will always be free and that he is moving it over to Unreal Engine 4 and will make sure owners of the current one get both copies. I think it has potential.

Man, this game took a real turn. Bummer, I was really looking forward to it. Sorry Chuffmoney :(

I'm still cautiously optimistic about the new Aliens game. Fingers crossed. From what I've seen it's looking good.

@ninjaparttime:

I was pretty sure I have heard the doctor saying that the mother committed suicide but still loved the daughter or something like that but maybe I was wrong.

Can't think of one at all. It should be obvious Dark Cloud II and Persona don't qualify; their stories don't take place inside the dungeons, except for a few cutscenes that could happen anywhere. People are definitely working on stuff like this, though. Isn't Brad Muir's Massive Chalice supposed to have some of this stuff, what with all the companions that are guaranteed to perma-die at some point?

Uh... Spelunky? Sounds like it has a better story than Daylight.

@ethanielrain said:

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2? Sort of but not really. They're kinda halfway, since the maps are basically fixed, but item and enemy placement is randomized. They barely tell a "story", but it certainly does character moments really well.

They do tell a story, but it's more about the world and not about the characters. I really liked reading all the grafiti in the game

@abendlaender said:

Yeah, the graffiti is great. Equal parts funny and sad, as you read about people either reveling in the anarchy of it all or families torn apart by the zombie apocalypse.

I think the game is actually pretty character focused, just not actually focused on progressing those characters. Every character interaction just kinda fleshes them out more and reinforces what they're all about.

I still think Rochelle is really interesting, like as a case study of how to write a character that no players particularly like. Her character writing isn't terrible, but to my knowledge, the community (and pretty much all of my friends) just either hate her, or think she is so unremarkable and boring that they never want to play as her. She's just like, aggressively not cool, with all her "son of a bee sting" even though it's the zombie apocalypse so who cares if you swear. She's a producer for a local TV station, but I feel like at no point does that really inform her character (I could understand the no swearing thing if she were a producer on a kids' TV station or something). Conversely, I think Ellis' country mechanic schtick informs why he is so naive about everything and all of his life experiences revolve around him and his buddy Keith. Nick being a con artist informs why he is generally a jaded dirtbag. Coach being a high school coach informs why he kinda stays positive but is also able to crack lame gym teachers jokes about stuff.

I mean, good on Valve for writing a black woman character who isn't a stereotype, but she's just so aggressively lame and mundane that she kinda didn't fit in with the rest of the cast.