A Fntastic employee talks about the making of The Day Before

The Day Before has been controversial almost since its release. Just four days after launch, the developers announced that the studio was closing and ceasing the development of its products, citing the "financial failure" of the game as the main reason for this decision.

After its release, The Day Before quickly became one of the worst games on Steam: many critics noted that the game was more like a loot shooter than an MMO.

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DualShockers spoke with a former Fntastic developer who told us that the game was never intended as an MMO, although it was advertised as such.

I never considered it as an MMO project. None of our team knows why they called it an MMO. It was always a third-person shooter with some cooperative mechanics. No RPG mechanics were implemented.

So why did the marketing and development of the game go in two different directions? The developer replied that there was no connection from the side of Fntastic founders Eduard and Aisen Gotovtsev.

Nobody could explain it. Maybe the company leaders knew something but didn't tell us. From a technical point of view, there were no RPG mechanics implemented in the game. There was no possibility to put many people in the world or make the world bigger. From the beginning, the idea was that there would be less than 100 people on the servers. This is not an MMO. No clans, no raids, closed hubs. And it's been like this for over two years.

Image credit: yehe.asia

The development of The Day Before was completely managed by the Gotovtsevs, who made every gameplay and design decision. The developer described the chaotic working conditions at Fntastic, where the studio founders ignored feedback from the team and made major decisions based on their own fantasies.

Many good ideas from our team were not considered because Eduard and Aisen did not approve of them. For example, voice chat. Anyone who complained too much was kicked out of the team. Many stupid ideas were implemented, removed, and re-implemented because the brothers thought they knew better than us what people wanted. A huge amount of time and work was wasted because work had to be done and redone.

This dubious survival game had many warning signs from the very beginning of its market appearance, but people still bought it. And now The Day Before has disappeared.

Main image by Stable Diffusion