Review | White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

LifeisXbox’s White Day: A Labyrinth Named School Review | Uncover eerie secrets and experience troubled instances as you play as new Yeondu High School student, Lee Hee-min, sneaking around the school in the middle of the night while avoiding the horrors you’re faced with in this new action and adventure horror title, White Day: A Labyrinth Named School. With troublesome janitors lurking around the school, hunting your every movement and souls of the dead haunting your movements, you realise you’re trapped with nothing else to do other than search for possible clues and a way to escape; if it’s even possible. White Day: A Labyrinth Named School has been developed by PQube Limited and published by Sonnori as a Korean Horror classic that has been remade from the original back in 2001 with many different endings to reach. Use whatever is at your disposal to hide, sneak, and avoid danger at all costs. Who knows – you might live to see another day. Or not. That all depends on you and whether you can guide yourself to safety.

Most Memorable Moment

Disturbing imagery and scenes were certainly the most memorable moments for me. The spirits. entities and ghosts that haunt the school are from what I assume is from when it used to be a hospital and are always around in strange places, stopping you in your tracks. Their presence made everything have a surreal atmosphere, adding to the unknown of working out exactly what has happened to this school and why it suffers such dark instances. Finding a way around them to advance gave more depth than just being chased around a school which, by all means, should be clear of students during the night.

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series S | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Replayability | With numerous endings to achieve, dialogue choices to choose from, and the inclusion of broad difficulty options, there is plenty of replayability in White Day. I find that games which have this quality tend to always make me play for longer and obviously try out different options each time because my curiosity just gets the better of me every single time. I do intend on playing through the game more than once to experience everything there is to offer as I feel there is mass amounts of content I am yet to experience.

• Difficulty options | In White Day, there is a difficulty to suit everyone. There are five different choices, ranging from very easy to hell mode – although hell mode is locked for the first playthrough. By deciding your difficulty, you also affect many different elements of the game itself. The janitors can have a more advanced AI, items might be harder to find, and ghosts may appear – it really just depends on what you’re comfortable with. You can enjoy the story with fewer thrills or take on the additional challenges at your own risk, making it suitable for people wanting to play the game for different reasons.

• Stealth element | As you can be spotted out by the janitors when navigating around the school when running, opening doors, or by turning on lights, stealth is your friend during your time exploring as once they’re alerted you must hide to get them off your trail. This then allows you to be free to progress wherever your objective takes you. I love having to sneak around in horror games as you can’t just run; you have to be instinctive and tactical. Yeah, you won’t be punished greatly on lower difficulties but it still adds to the level of patience and awareness required to navigate safely.

• Map guidance | I don’t think I would have progressed very far in White Day without the use of my trusted map. If there was ever a moment of hesitancy regarding where I needed to go or what I needed to do, the map always gave me an indication – whether it was the room I needed or where a puzzle was located. I will admit I only noticed this an hour or so into the game but once I did, it was a godsend. Without it, the game would have taken far longer to complete so thank you for including this developer!

• Exploration | I always found myself searching high and low in every room, floor, and building I gained access to. Whether it was for health or key items, documents, or miscellaneous – I wanted to find everything possible everywhere I went. If you like to hunt for loot in video games, you’ll understand what I mean. I also found the lore to be really interesting to read throughout and in my opinion, the more lore – the better; especially in horror games with unusual circumstances surrounding me. You will need to explore in order to progress by finding keys or clues to puzzles meaning you can’t just hide and hope for the best or that you find a way out because trust me, it’s far from that simple.

• Tense atmosphere | Being in a secluded school in the middle of the night while being sought out by possessed janitors and ghouls that haunt the school is enough for anyone to be defensive and cautious of what might be lurking around the hallways and classrooms. As there is very little noise other than the jingling of the janitor’s keys when he is nearby, your own footsteps, or simple white noise, you are mostly in near enough complete silence unless you’re in a chase or completing a timed sequence. This keeps anyone from getting too comfortable and always enlists a sense of bothersome feeling in those who dare tread alone.

• Detailed documentation | Lore is consistently found in White Day and is particularly necessary to understand the history of Yeondu High School and previous tragedies that have occurred, leading to the presence of ghosts and ghouls. There are also some additional stories for those who are interested. Reading through these documents allowed me to make more sense over time by piecing together the various information I found. It’s pretty essential to the game’s background to read these and I’m grateful they have been included, giving players the choice to make their own conclusions and assumptions.

Mixed Feelings

• Dialogue | Now I will admit that for some reason or another, I didn’t expect there to be voiceovers for the characters in White Day but there were which was fantastic. They all sounded clear and had questionable emotion in their voices but unfortunately, the character you play as doesn’t have any voice when you choose between your answers at certain moments. I also thought the dialogue between characters was quite tiresome and the interactions didn’t hold my attention massively unless something drastic happened within the scene also. In addition, the mouth tracking with speech made talking look strange and unappealing.

• Vague achievements | For the achievement hunters who want to play White Day, be aware that half of the achievements have an extremely vague indication as to how they can be achieved. I would assume they are related to the endings and dialogue choices but I can’t say for sure. I personally don’t mind having some mysterious achievements as they can force you to play the game more to find out exactly what is behind the achievements but having one-word descriptions for me was too unestablished and I’d prefer a small thought-provoking statement instead.

What we Disliked

• Outworn visuals | The main factor that lets down White Day is the extremely lacklustre visuals which are uninspired and bland. Yes, I think horror games do benefit from less saturated colouring and a gloomy environment but not to the point where I’m disheartened and disappointed with everything I set my eyes on. I also wasn’t too impressed with the attention to detail with regard to the setting. Characters looked far more polished and as they probably account for less than 10% of the overall screen time, I think more time should have been spent on the visuals of the school.

• Obtuse puzzles | I cannot begin to explain my frustration with trying to work out some of the puzzles I was faced with in White Day; they actually made my brain hurt. One, in particular, requires some incredible brain power to work out because the tips given to solve the puzzle are somewhat helpful but only if you know a key element in working out the final solution. I found these to be incredibly off-putting, causing me to take breaks due to being confused beyond belief. These needed a far better explanation in my opinion as the last thing I want is to spend vast amounts of time figuring something out which, when you know what to do, seems incredibly straightforward.

• Downloadable ‘content’ | One of the first things I noticed when I loaded up White Day was an option for downloadable content in the main menu and I didn’t know about this. It was the first thing I checked out and I thought it might be extra missions or modes to try but all it contained were additional outfits for all characters. Some were questionable in the ‘revealing’ sense of the word while other outfits looked authentic and made the characters stand out so you could tell them apart at the very least. It was the more skimpy-looking ones personally that would just ruin the experience for me and take away from the true experience. I’m sure it will make others very happy though so each to their own.

How long to beat the story | Approximately 6-8 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Approximately 30-40 Hours

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