White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is a survival horror video game developed by South Korean developer Sonnori in 2001 and remade by ROI games in 2015, the latter of which was released worldwide. Set in 2001, it follows Lee Hui-min, a high-school transfer student who sneaks into the school after hours to give a White Day gift to his crush, Han So-young, only to be trapped inside with a few other live students, a psychotic janitor, and a host of supernatural entities apparently brought on from many suicides. Apparently based on a true story during the Korean War.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Excellent use of a first-person survival horror game for it's time. It's basically like Resident Evil 7 long before that game came out.
 * 2) Combinations are randomized on every playthrough in the remake, making it unpredictable.
 * 3) Terrifying atmosphere, there's virtually no blood or gore throughout the game, but the cramped areas give a great feeling of claustrophobia that permeates throughout the game.
 * 4) Scary soundtrack that benefits the atmosphere.
 * 5) You can't fight back against enemies, and can only run or hide instead. It could be easy enough to do against the janitor, but ghosts, which appear at random times and are nearly invisible are a different story.
 * 6) Interesting story.
 * 7) Like the aforementioned Resident Evil (albeit, the earlier games), you have limited saves in the form of felt-tip pens, which make the game very intense.
 * 8) On lower difficulties, the player gets text messages that provide helpful hints for progression. Conversely, higher difficulties have the phone say there's no signal.
 * 9) Fun puzzles to solve that give the game a metroidvania style, also similar to Resident Evil.
 * 10) The remake improved the graphics greatly.
 * 11) Dialogue choices throughout not only affect the ending, as you'd expect, but also how the plot progresses.
 * 12) Loads of collectible documents that range from actually important ones that give hints on how to progress to ones that fill the lore, like rumors and ghost stories.
 * 13) The AI for the janitor is generally pretty good, as they will react to loud noises like you running, or even notice a door open or closed that wasn't before and investigate it.
 * 14) Eight different endings depending on your choices.
 * 15) You can get healing items from vending machines, which of course requires school coins in order to do so.
 * 16) Non-linear puzzle solving. An item you pick up might not actually be useful until hours later.
 * 17) Interesting use of Taoism and other Chinese religious studies in the lore.
 * 18) The remake has an English language version if you want it, if not, you can change it to the original Korean version (with subtitles, of course)

Bad Qualities

 * 1) One particular puzzle, the code for the principal's office, is EXTREMELY frustrating. Getting to the room is easy enough, but then it's in a code that's difficult to decipher and the game doesn't give enough hints for this. You also have to decipher it WHILE THE JANITOR IS STALKING YOU. Luckily, it uses the same four numbers, just in a different order each time, which makes it a little less frustrating, but even with that, it's still difficult to decipher in the first place.
 * 2) The Janitor can often appear out of nowhere and chase you, then disappear just as suddenly. He's also pretty difficult to evade, considering you cannot fight back.
 * 3) Can feel a little cliche at times.
 * 4) The lights in the rooms are next to useless since they attract the Janitor, and you get a lighter that does a pretty good job without attracting him.
 * 5) The remake's graphics may be a huge improvement, but they're still kind of mediocre, especially for the time.