White Day: A Labyrinth Named School Review – Cult-Classic Korean Horror (PS5)

White Day is easily one of the scariest horror games of the 2000s decade. The strange aura surrounding the game, scenarios, and creative use of jumpscares was a mostly unexplored concept at that time. Even if the haunted and abandoned school concept is nothing but cliché, it stood out from other games due to its unique nature. Nowadays we have the 2015 remake that has been ported to several different platforms, which is essentially the same version we’re reviewing today. The PS5 version is the latest, “definitive” way to play the remake. So, before we get to play the long-awaited second entry in consoles this very month, let’s take a closer look at one of the games that represent the peak of Korean horror games.

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is available for $29.99 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.

Story – Complicated but Engaging

The story follows Lee Hee-Min, a high school student who is secretly in love with Han So-Young, one of his classmates. Hee-Min decides to surprise her with a present for white day by sneaking into the school during the night and leaving the gift in her locker. As he breaks into the school when he shouldn’t be doing it, things start getting spooky. At night, it seems the school is not exactly what he expected it to be.

The premise is simple and engaging enough, the curiosity of what’s gonna happen to the main character because of his awful decision driven by romance to break into the school at night is the fuel that made me keep going forward, even if the scenarios of this game are particularly scary. It takes guts to continue because of the oppressive atmosphere of the school. It’s intimidating, and there aren’t many horror games out there that achieve this at all, even less if you only take Korean games into account.

The protagonist (Hee-Min) and his crush (So-Young).

However, the story doesn’t take too long to start getting complicated. Rituals, ghosts, unfinished business by both the living and the dead… the school hides many different secrets. Most of them are very interesting, and the fact that the majority of them are optional just makes it better in my opinion. The main plot starts getting confusing and slightly uninteresting towards the final moments of the game though, which is truly a shame because of the brilliant construction of the first half.

Even if the story results to be more tangled than I would have aspired it to be, the main premise is simple and attractive. A haunted school explored by a student who simply wanted to express his love to his crush is so simple yet so entertaining that reminds when video game stories used to be more fun and less cinematic, which is the undefeated standard of today’s horror games. When I first played White Day: A Labyrinth Named School, I couldn’t stop comparing the experience to what I felt when I played Obscure on PS2 when I was a kid. I felt a weird nostalgia for playing a game I never played before, so I think there’s a considerable space in my heart for most of White Day’s silliness and simplicity.

You can say that again, girl.

Gameplay – Run, Hide, Run, Hide

The gameplay could have been much better than it ultimately is. You’ll spend most of the time running and hiding from the janitor (which has a very unbalanced AI), and it can get repetitive and boring really fast once it stops being scary. It lacks the tension of the Outlast games, where running and hiding feels like a desperate attempt to save yourself from a psychopath who’s going to do unimaginable things to you if it catches you. In White Day, it just feels like running from a dumb AI that decides to show up at the worst possible moment every single time. And solving puzzles, grabbing collectibles, all while being pursued by the janitor can be a very painful and tedious task.

The exploration moments are brilliant though. I love everything about White Day’s gameplay that doesn’t involve being chased by the janitor (which is sadly like 50% of the whole thing). The ghost encounters, the hidden collectibles, the secret items that unlock alternate endings… Even the alternate outfits are fun to unlock. I think they nailed a truly interesting horror adventure where backtracking, solving puzzles, and looking for ghosts and collectibles is definitely a fun thing to do.

It’s also worth mentioning that the survival horror mechanics of the game are very basic, but they work perfectly fine. You can find coins scattered around the school, which can be used to get items to restore your health and stamina. You’ll also need to collect pens to be able to save your game, which is also a very old-fashioned mechanic, but the overall item mechanics of the game are pure nostalgia and I always have fun with this kind of inventory management.

You will spend a lot of time running from the janitor.

Graphics & Sound – Slightly Remarkable

The visuals of White Day aren’t anything that will blow your mind. But they are decent enough for a game that doesn’t intend to look realistic. It has anime-like aesthetics with decent graphics, so I think White Day does everything it can to represent the best part of Korean horror games. It runs particularly well on PS5, yes, but it sadly doesn’t improve anything noticeable from the PS4 version other than performance. And the performance was already great on PS4, so there’s that.

I have to say White Day’s soundtrack, like its overall ambiance and atmosphere, still gives me goosebumps every time I come back to it. There’s something about the soundtrack of this game that just feels completely fitting with the whole experience. Even the sound effects fit perfectly well when you pick up an item or open up your inventory. The sound design is just brilliant and I’m eager to see if this quality will also be met in the game’s sequel.

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School was reviewed on the PS5.