One of Steam’s top wishlist games has seen multiple delays over the course of its development, but it’s finally due to release next week.
One of Steam’s most wishlisted games of the past few years, The Day Before, is finally due for release next week. The Day Before has been in development since at least 2021, but considering the content of its announcement that year, it’s probably been in the works much longer. That very first trailer was significant enough to garner tons of hype, winning The Day Before a spot on many a prospective player’s wishlist.
But development problems, unexpected changes, and a variety of other issues kept The Day Before off shelves for way longer than was originally intended. However, now almost three full years later, it finally has a concrete release date, and it’s only a few days away. Here’s a look at what the game is, why it’s so popular, and what happened to keep it in development for so long.
The Day Before Was The Most Wishlisted Game On Steam In 2022
According to Steam‘s Top Wishlists page, The Day Before was the most wishlisted game in summer 2022 but has since fallen to number two at the time of writing. The Top Wishlists page makes a good, crowdsourced temperature gauge for the level of hype around a game; other titles in the top five include the long-awaited indie games Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2. Since Steam is the most well-established online storefront for PC games, it could be said that The Day Before was one of the most anticipated PC games of 2022.
The Day Before was scheduled to come out on June 21, 2022, but just a month before, it was abruptly delayed until March 2023. It began to tumble down the Top Wishlists rankings a bit later, but still sits in that number two spot, behind only the upcoming free-to-play FPS The Finals. Of course, that wasn’t the end of its troubles; it’s now the end of 2023, and The Day Before still isn’t out. So, what exactly is it, and what happened?
The Day Before Promises Groundbreaking, Post-Apocalyptic MMO Gameplay
The Day Before is an open world, survival horror, massively multiplayer game very much in the vein of titles like Rust, 7 Days to Die, and Dying Light, but with a few unique twists. First and foremost, it’s set in a faithful recreation of a pseudo-fictional city on the East Coast of the United States. The Day Before calls it New Fortune City, but it looks and sounds suspiciously like New York.
The core gameplay consists of exploring ruins, gathering supplies and valuable trading items, then bringing them back to outposts. They may then spend their profits on new gear, home customization, or a host of customizable vehicles to drive around the city. As they travel about, players must negotiate various survival-related gauges, like hunger, thirst, energy, and temperature, in order to stay alive. They must also keep an eye out for mindless zombies and hostile player characters with designs on their loot.
Now, all this sounds ambitious enough for some big-name, AAA development studio. However, The Day Before was entirely developed by a small, almost unheard-of company called Fntastic. It’s easy to see how such a mechanically complex game could be problematic for a development team of any size, but Fntastic faced some truly unexpected struggles while The Day Before was in the making.
Why The Day Before Was Delayed
The Day Before was first announced with a complete gameplay trailer on January 29, 2021, and it was already making big promises. In the footage, players could be seen driving cars, entering enormous buildings with no loading times, and using stealth to sneak around hostile groups. It also displayed an advanced weather system; while its players were on the run from another party, a snowstorm blew in, greatly reducing visibility and making it harder to get a bead on enemy targets. It looked to be graphically impressive, mechanically interesting, all-around, good old-fashioned multiplayer fun.
The trailer was an instant hit, and The Day Before began climbing up the ranks of Steam’s most wishlisted games. Fntastic set an initial release date of June 21, 2022, for PC and consoles, but that would never come to pass. Just a month before, in May 2022, The Day Before was abruptly delayed with its developers deciding to transfer the game into the newly released Unreal Engine 5. Its new release date was March 2023.
But things only got more complicated from there. In January 2023, The Day Before disappeared from the Steam storefront without warning. Amid player concern, Fntastic announced that the removal was temporary, due to trademark issues. But to make matters worse, YouTube videos involving the game began dropping like flies. It was eventually revealed that Fntastic had been planning a delay anyway, but the copyright conflict could only have made it worse.
Fntastic claims that the copyright issues originated from a calendar app called TheDayBefore.
But in the meantime, speculation ran wild. Many began theorizing that The Day Before was fake, made as a set piece with animation software to scam prospective buyers. Of course, Fntastic wasn’t taking pre-orders or crowdfunding money at that point, so these were only rumors – especially considering that The Day Before‘s release date is so close now, it’s definitely real. Rumors also arose that the game was changing its title, following Fntastic‘s August 2023 trademark filing for the name Dayworld.
What To Expect From The Day Before
Until just recently, no one knew where The Day Before stood. But on November 1, Fntastic made an announcement: The Day Before had won its original name back and was scheduled for release on December 7, 2023. However, this time, the initial release would only be available in early access via Steam. That went along with a brand-new trailer showcasing new and improved gameplay. It’s nice to see the game coming out after so long, but there are still a few things to be concerned about.
For one thing, there’s no telling how long The Day Before‘s early access period could last. Sometimes games remain in early access for a few months, but sometimes it takes years. For its part, Fntastic claims it only wants to keep The Day Before in early access for six to eight months. Hopefully, that goes according to plan – but either way, this also means a further delayed console release for The Day Before. There’s no word on whether Fntastic still intends to release the game on consoles at all.
Thankfully, The Day Before looks to be fully featured even in its early access version, and its Steam page assures players it’s true to the original vision. It’s had a lot of ups and downs in development, but it’s far from the first game to go through that. With a little luck, The Day Before can turn it all around after its early access release on December 7, 2023.
