Dead Man’s Diary Review: An Apocalypse to Forget (PS5)

Throughout my years I’ve played numerous games set in some form of an apocalypse. It’s honestly my favourite world setting to explore, so when I stumbled upon Dead Man’s Diary and then discovered it got ported to PS5, I instantly wanted to give it a look. However, what I was about to embark on was nothing I was expecting. Developed by TML Studio, Dead Man’s Diary takes you on a very explorative adventure across a post-apocalyptic world. Set 15 years after the catastrophe, you leave your shelter and explore a world devoid of human life. On your own, you must find a way to survive. 

Dead Man’s Diary is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S. 

Story – Walking Down a Soulless Road

The general narrative of Dead Man’s Diary has you taking up the role of an unnamed survivor. They were recently exiled from their shelter and dropped into the forest to fend for themselves. You begin to explore and collect resources to build a campfire and shelter. Annoyingly this is pretty much the main plot for nearly all the levels. Sometimes certain plot points do occur, leading the story to travel in a certain direction but nothing engaging occurs. Early in the game, a building catches the eye of the protagonist so we’re led to believe we’ll be heading there. However, we then start detouring through random locations with no mention of the mysterious building or any clear objective by the protagonist. 

Regarding other pieces of narrative in Dead Man’s Diary, there are notes scattered around that show pieces of lore from before and during the apocalypse. Sometimes these notes assist with the numerous puzzles standing in your way. Other times it’s just a snippet of ramblings that don’t fit with the intended lore or worldbuilding. Another type of written narrative is the diary the protagonist writes in. This details the events that occur during a level with mostly recaps of either your current objective or just uninteresting information. 

Explore the world with your trusty Geiger Counter

Character – The Lone Annoyance

One of the biggest cons of Dead Man’s Diary is its main character. The unnamed protagonist is the only character that speaks during the entirety of the game and unfortunately, he’s very annoying. The main issue is that most of the dialogue is trying to come off as either sarcastic or funny but ends up just being obnoxious. Constantly commenting on random things you find or actions taken like trying to open locked doors. Every time I would find a locked door, he’d start moaning about how every door was locked. This would be funny say if he were to comment on it maybe once or twice but after the first few levels it’s every time. 

Moving past the protagonist’s dialogue, Dead Man’s Diary doesn’t benefit much from having only the sole protagonist speaking. There could have been situations where we could meet or at least hear other characters. Hell, having audio recordings would have been a great collectable to find. Having numerous characters tell us their stories would have helped immerse players more into the game’s world instead of a small extract on a note. Weirdly, there are random record players that offer some intrigue and it’s not what you’d expect. Oddly, it plays a jingle from a radio station which leaves me wondering, why didn’t they have us listen to an audio recording or have characters speak through radios to offer some sort of entertaining narrative? 

Embark on an improvised journey and discover the stories of who was left behind

Gameplay – Simply a Bore

Dead Man’s Diary has quite standard first-person gameplay. You can jump, crouch, sprint, and interact with objects. There are a few tools scattered around the game’s runtime with the first one being the Flashlight. You receive this at the very beginning, allowing you to get through the dark forest and numerous levels in the future. Throughout the game, you are also able to picklock doors and containers. It uses a similar format to games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls which I really like. Even has a nice feature that shows how much durability the lockpick has till it breaks.

Not too long you’ll find the Geiger Counter that helps check if food and drink are safe from radiation. You stick with these tools for a long time but later receive a gas mask to assist with areas filled with deadly gas. Lastly, you are given two weapons, a pistol and a shotgun. They are the only way you can fend off enemies and are given to you quite far into the game. All of these tools feel like the starting ingredients for a great apocalyptic adventure game but sadly everything comes off as too safe. 

Search through numerous echoes of life for resources

There are obstacles to deal with, whether it’s a locked gate stopping progression or an enemy ready to end your life. However, overcoming these obstacles will be for nothing if you can’t manage your character’s needs. You’ll have a few meters showcasing your hunger, hydration, health, radiation sickness, and temperature levels. These can be managed by collecting resources that are scattered around the game’s world. This system isn’t too hard to manage but do be careful since a lot of the early resources don’t always favor the needs of your character. You’ll be finding many items that you’ll most likely already be full on. Saving often will help manage your time when having to repeat scavenging areas. 

Level Design – Repetitive Loops

When it comes to the level design for Dead Man’s Diary, it tends to be very repetitive. Every level starts you in a new area where your objective is to explore or find shelter. Levels are mostly empty areas with usually the same obstacles to progress through to the next level. There’s a plentiful supply of resources scattered around to collect though I found mostly the same resources that I no longer needed. Enemy placement felt very lacking too, since the mutants were teased but could only be taken care of over halfway through the game. 

Sometimes you’ll get sections of the level that have a unique obstacle for you to progress through. There was an early encounter with a bear that required you to move from your camp to high ground. There was also the inclusion of radioactive rain that if not under shelter, you’ll die from radiation poisoning. Then other levels required you to either sneak past mutants, go on a shotgun rampage, or hack a military drone in a secret military base. These unique objectives did help escape from the repetitive nature of Dead Man’s Diary but sadly not for long. 

Whether Fixing generators, unlocking doors, or building camps, gathering resources helps with completing objectives.

Crafting & Puzzles

Dead Man’s Diary offers a small amount of crafting via the camp and the upgrade table. Camps include a bed and a fire to use for crafting. You’re able to create med kits with a bed and the stove allows you to craft food and pills for decreasing temperature. The upgrade table lets you enhance your equipment but requires special books and resources. Saving the parts for upgrades is pretty easy since you can’t use it for anything else. However, it’s not possible to keep resources for building camps from level to level. Strangely, you lose it all once you start a new level considering there’s no explanation for why. It’s quite bothersome and frankly doesn’t make sense narratively or mechanically.  

Each level has a small range of puzzles for you to solve. Whether it’s trying to find a key to a locked area, a combination for a safe/door code, repairing generators, or hacking computers. The latter is the most frustrating RNG minigame I’ve played for some time. There wasn’t much of a tutorial for it though after a few attempts I understood what I had to do. But with it being random, the number of times I’d get spotted by the system near the end of the hack was too often even with the tools used to help stop that from happening. The remaining minigames are either solved by simple math, finding the answers via notes or simply getting lucky. 

Complete simple puzzles that mostly don’t require much skill to solve

Graphics & Audio – Beauty at the End of the World

Using the power of Unreal Engine 5, Dead Man’s Diary looks fantastic on the PS5. Each environment brings to life the abandoned aged world that the game is trying to convey. There were plenty of levels that made me compare Dead Man’s Diary visuals to AAA games like The Last of Us, Fallout 4, and Metro Exodus. I loved seeing the overgrowth of nature-infesting houses and other man-made structures. Though some of the environments like the sewers and some of the open areas with random houses do repeat models, it doesn’t take you away from the immersive experience. 

Now the audio for Dead Man’s Diary is a bit of a mixed bag. Depending on what level it was, the audio would capture the experience of being alone in a world abandoned by human life. Then in others, the game wants to constantly attack your ears with random horror-like sound effects to trick you into thinking there is a threat coming your way. This would happen In a lot of the early levels when the game would constantly have your character turn around for a sound effect, teasing either a bear coming your way or something else. However, the majority of the time nothing ever happens, making those former moments completely useless. 

Dead Man’s Diary was reviewed on PS5 with a key provided by visibility-communications.