Daddy Review

A survival horror game that stresses the importance of stealth, Pudding’s Daddy has you saving (who else) your daddy from a nefarious bearded man. The game may make little sense, but does its gameplay shine through?

Daddy Review

The story of Daddy makes absolutely no sense, and only gets more confusing as time goes on. After your daddy runs into an exploding bearded man, he is captured in a cavernous house. As a loyal son, it is up to you to break your daddy free and get out without being spotted by the bearded man.

This is far easier said than done though, as a number of obstacles stand in your way. A number of padlocks, crates, planks of wood, and rock formations block your way, and it up to players to find the proper item to progress. Item management in a survival horror title, when done correctly, can go a long way – just look at how the original Resident Evil handled things.

However, there are a number of factors that make even the most basic task an absolute chore. For one, players can only carry one item at a time. Found a key, but need to use the detonator handle to explode some dynamite? You’ve got to drop one to get to the other. In addition, though the house is fairly small, there is a fair amount of backtracking – expect to see the same areas multiple times during your playthrough. Not much thought went into the design of its world, making it fairly repetitive to play.

This is made that much worse with the hunger mechanic. If players do not eat in a set amount of time, the screen goes black and your stomach rumbles. To counteract this, players must munch away at food strewn about its world. It’s an annoying thing to include, and could have been easily omitted.

Exploration without any danger would be troublesome enough, but the bearded man lurks around every corner. Though he may stumble around, do jumping jacks, and dance to music, he is a serious threat that can one-shot you if he catches up to you. To avoid him, players can run, hide in chests or cabinets, or attempt to take him down with a gun. The first two options work the best – the AI is as dumb as rocks, and will immediately stop pursuing if out of his line of sight. However, the gun works as well as a pea shooter – despite us blasting a number of rounds into this towering menace, we may have been launching spitballs.

Despite our playthrough lasting around an hour, things dragged on far than it had any right to. Not only did the back and forth get to us, there were also a number of bugs that greatly hindered things. The absolute worst happened five minutes in, where the screen went completely white. The only way to get out of these situations is to reset the game, and without save functionality, this means players will have to start things over.

Daddy is a buggy game that had little thought put into its world. Item management, along with its unnecessary hunger mechanic, make its absurdly short playtime drag on far longer than it has any right to.

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