The Day Before’s gameplay trailer actually convinces more people it’s not real

That’s not how you silence your doubters

The developers of The Day Before, Schrödinger’s open-world RPG, have finally delivered on their promise of showing a video with raw gameplay – but that did little to reassure potential players about the game’s state.

The Day Before was originally planned to be released in March 2023, but was recently delayed to November after a bizarre chain of events which left members of the gaming community in doubt about the game’s actual existence.

For a game that was set for a release in just a few weeks, The Day Before’s gameplay didn't exactly look engaging. The video consists of two people walking around for a few minutes without any ambient sounds or voice overs, one and a half minutes of checking an inventory screen, and a short firefight against lethargic zombies that might as well be target dummies. There is no sign of how The Day Before’s promised sub-systems are interacting with each other – just like the original gameplay trailer, this looks more like an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo than an actual game.

The reactions of potential players have not been great: “Best jogging simulator I've ever seen, can't wait for the next delay”, one watcher of the trailer had to say on YouTube. Another said: “Wonder how the game would run if there [were] more than 4 or 5 zombies on the screen or even loaded into the area.”

Indeed, the world of The Day Before looked largely empty. Sure, we understand it’s a post-apocalyptic setting, but where are all the zombies? The world feels more dead than the walking corpses (not) populating it.

Other viewers mocked the choice of scenes the developers included in the video: “That 90 seconds in the inventory screen had me enthralled.”

If Fntastic intended this gameplay footage to assure potential buyers that The Day Before was indeed real, it missed the mark. People are comparing it with a homework assignment that was finished and handed in last-minute.

“If this game actually comes out it will be nothing short of a miracle”, reads one of the most upvoted comments under the video, while another states: “Imagine actually expecting a full game after watching this video.”

Viewers had one positive thing to say about the trailer, at least: Both the male and female characters' bottoms look phenomenal.