Inspired by The Day Before, this indie dev spent 160 hours over 9 months making a parody trailer - only for the game to shut down long before they could even finish

After seeing a few of The Day Before’s gameplay trailers, one indie dev decided to make a ‘parody’ trailer of their own to see how quickly they could whip up a video that captured a similar degree of promise. But when that project began, they couldn't have known what would eventually happen to The Day Before, and how much it would fail to live up to that promise.

The developer, who goes by Crimson, initially set themselves the goal of creating a The Day Before parody trailer in March, streaming some of the work and posting updates on Twitter so people could see the project come together in real-time.

Some updates relate to random development thoughts, such as buying more asset packs – “Don’t accuse me of asset flipping,” they joke – whereas others are more granular changes backed up by clips, such as a recent one that shows a bevy of kicking and swinging animations.

“I had the idea after seeing a few of the Day Before gameplay trailers, which all had somewhat varying levels of detail, and some of them almost looking like 'movie sets,' like the environments were only fit for the purpose of creating a trailer or marketing material and that's it,” Crimson tells me in an interview.

“That probably happens quite commonly in the industry but upon seeing it for TDB, I felt like trying to tackle my own 'zombie survival' gameplay trailer and seeing how quickly I could whip one up. Originally I aimed at completing it within seven crunch days back in March but that quickly fell apart when my GPU randomly called it quits. So now I'm just trying to complete it in a timely manner whilst also showing people the development process.”

A fried GPU was hardly the last surprise to be thrown Crimson’s way, though, as The Day Before would eventually release following some long-standing trademark disputes. Unfortunately, that launch was swiftly followed by complaints that what was billed as a survival MMO was nothing of the sort. That wasn't much of a surprise to those who had been following the game's turbulent development, but what happened next certainly was. 

Following a few days of quiet, The Day Before developer Fntastic announced it was calling it quits - the game was a "financial failure" and the studio would be closing down - forcing its publisher to step in and let everyone know they’d be refunded. 

With that in mind, I ask Crimson if they were surprised at all or if the closure had any influence on the project. They would, after all, be parodying something that was swiftly being scrubbed from the internet. The game was delisted from Steam and YouTube channels were scrubbed to the point where The Day Before almost ceased to exist. 

“Sadly I wasn't too surprised about the result of what they released, I really wanted to be proven wrong about the trailers and see some grand launch with tons of content and basically doing well on their concept but unfortunately that didn't happen,” they say. “The studio closure though was definitely a shocker, especially how soon it happened after their launch date, a bit of a red flag but still very shocking.

“It didn't have too much influence on my work ethic. I've been working away on it at the same pace. It's definitely caused a huge influx of people seeing what I'm putting out though, which I'm super grateful for.”

Given everything that’s happened so far, I ask Crimson if they see the parody trailer as educational, given the flurry of news reinforcing the idea that you should be careful about what a trailer promises. They say "that’s the goal of it." At the time of writing, the developer has put in around 160 hours of work, though it appears the trailer isn’t far from being wrapped up and greater plans are on the horizon.

“I had a ton of different ideas for different games, and the survival genre has always been interesting to me, so I'm thinking a co-op zombie survival will be my next endeavor in the near future,” they say. Crimson is currently working on Suit for Hire, a top-down action shooter that aims to bring gunplay and martial arts together in one violent bundle.

“I think with the amount of attention and the result of The Day Before, it definitely strengthened the idea of working within that genre.”

The bizarre history of The Day Before: From Steam's most-anticipated MMO to a bland survival game that killed a studio.