At this point, most serious gamers have heard aboutThe Day Before’sdisastrous launch. Initially, the game was planned as amassively onlinezombie survival title,attempting to give gamers an experience they hadn’t yet experienced but certainly had been asking for.
Sadly, at launch, the game appeared to be nothing more than a scam, resulting in a final product that was nothing close to what the studio had initially teased to over-hyped players. News quickly broke about how much of a mess development was, refunds were demanded, and everyone had a field day picking apart what went wrong.
When the developers at Fntastic recentlypromoted a new project, we all watched with a careful eye. Unsurprisingly, less than 24 hours after this announcement,the game had already come under fire, with the studio allegedly flipping many assets from Unity resources.
Introducing Escape Factory
Fntastic’s new game isEscape Factory, in which a team of 4–8 players navigate through physics-based platforming levels that feel somewhat reminiscent ofFall Guys. But clearly, it’s almost impossible for the developers to escape the failure ofThe Day Before.
Currently, theKickstarterhas made a whopping $9,859 of its $15,567 goal. While some may be enthusiastic about the “Fntastic 2.0” return, many others are still flaming them aboutThe Day Beforewith Kickstarter comments saying the “company is a scam.”
Twitter userOccular Malice provideda Wayback Machine link to the Steam forum post that Fntastic took down.In that post, they claim the developers at Fntastic ripped assets and implemented entire code elements from either the Unity asset hub or GitHub.
While we’re sure some work went into creating this game, the accusations against Fntastic make it appear that most of the game’s original assets were built on code and resources created by others, such as a networking codebase given out as a demo directly by Unity.
The Hypocrisy Of Fntastic
Yes, manybeginner-level projectssuccessfully use code and resources provided by others online. As a student studying game development, I know how much of a hassle creating a brand-new game from scratch can be and how practical these resources are for the development cycle. As Fntastic states ontheir website, a core issue leading toThe Day Before’s failure was “ambitious goals on a low indie budget.”
But for an indie development team that claims to be taking a new approach to “honesty, transparency, and community engagement,”flipping many assets and deleting posts and messages from community members who attempt to speak out against them is absolutely hypocritical.
The team is obviously a lot smaller now, and huge changes are being made to create something within a deliverable scope, but for their first step away fromThe Day Before’s dumpster fire, the team at Fntastic has clearly already somewhat stumbled.
Here’s the first trailer for Escape Factory.
The Day Before
WHERE TO PLAY
