Day One: Garry's Incident is an indie first-person Survival Sandbox game by French-Canadian developer Wild Games Studio. After failing to fund it on Kickstarter (despite a suspiciously generous "donation" by WGS's own CEO Stephane Woods), the game was released on Steam on September 25th, 2013 after getting through its Greenlight system.
The game follows the adventures of Garry, a cargo pilot who is currently in the depths of an alcohol-fueled depression after the death of his wife and child. While transporting a mysterious cargo, Garry's plane crash lands on an untamed tropical island... Garry is saved when the cargo somehow teleports him to safety. He wakes up to find a native tribesman attempting to ritually sacrifice him. Upon extracting himself from the situation, Garry must explore the island and search for a method of escape, all while dealing with hostile natives, murderous wildlife, and other, more unusual dangers.
Garry's Incident is designed as a Survival Sandbox game, with players having to keep track of their hunger and thirst as well as their health. The game has a crafting mechanic by which Garry can fashion supplies such as bandages or weapons by combining various raw materials found on the island.
The game was intended as an episodic release, with the developers stating that they will look to player input to determine what happens next in the story. However, the game proved to be a Creator Killer due to poor sales coupled with seriously negative press, leading to the developers discontinuing all further work on this or any other game.
This negative press—which is probably the reason you arrived here—stemmed from accusations that the developers abused YouTube's copyright claims system to remove a highly critical first-impressions video made by TotalBiscuit. The added online scrutiny from this incident also brought attention to other alleged incidents of misconduct by the developers to stamp out criticism that could hurt their profits, including a number of suspicious reviews on Metacritic inflating the game's score, and implications of Shameless Self Promotion on the game's Greenlight and Kickstarter pages. Not to mention the developer CEO's "donation" to his own company's Kickstarter, as mentioned previously.
The game was eventually removed from Steam on March 12th, 2018, but remains on the games store GamersGate.
Not to be confused with Garry's Mod.
The game provides examples of the following tropes:
- The All-Seeing A.I.: The A.I. can see you clear across the map, unhindered by the huge jungle full of trees and foliage. This results in a lot of abrupt attacks from out of nowhere. At other times, the A.I. will completely ignore you when you're standing right in front of them.
- Animals Hate Him: The entire wildlife population of the island seems to have it out for Garry. Not only is he subject to panther attacks, but the local monkeys will also attack him as well (it appears, from their glowing blue eyes, that they're affected by the same Hate Plague that is causing the natives to try to murder him too.)
- Artificial Stupidity: Zig-Zagged Trope. When the AI is not capable of seeing you across the map, it has some downright stupid moments. For instance, as shown in this point of TotalBiscuit's video
, tribesmen will sometimes be hit in the back repeatedly and fail to realize that you are right behind them. The AI just seems to be badly implemented, leading to this buggy behavior.TotalBiscuit: Can I... [realizes what he's seeing] Whaaat?! Whaaaaaat?! I hit him five times—er, three times in the back and he—doesn't even know that I'm here! [laughs incredulously] Why is this game! I'm not even gonna ask what is this game!
[Tribesman immediately turns around and kills Garry]
TB: What?! Now he realizes—?! Oh—screw everything about this! I'm sorry; I can't take another minute of this dreadful thing! - Cliffhanger: The game ends just as the plot starts to open up; according to the devs, they plan(ned) to release additional content for the game episodically.
- Left Hanging: The fallout from the incident with TotalBiscuit led to anemic sales,
meaning that the creators can't and won't add further content to the game. The game's epic failure also killed Wild Games Studio in its crib.
- Left Hanging: The fallout from the incident with TotalBiscuit led to anemic sales,
- Cutting the Knot: Early in the game, a non-hostile native steals your whiskey flask, and will only give it back if you do a 20 Bear Asses fetch quest for her. You can do the quest... OR, you can just straight-up murder her and take your flask back with no in-game consequences.
- Hate Plague: The apparent reason behind everybody trying to kill you.
- Invisible Wall: There are quite a few around the place. While in the case of some rocks this might make some sense, it makes no sense to have one placed in a large gap between two tents.
- Several inversions of this can be seen in TotalBiscuit's original video, where he can walk through crates and trees.
- Luck-Based Mission: Enemy attacks that normally hurt you by an average amount will sometimes insta-kill you, even when your health is almost full (says the useless Heads-Up Display). This seems to occur with no rhyme or reason.
- Made of Iron: The tribesmen will take several hits from a machete, even if you're hitting them in the back, repeatedly.
- Mayincatec: A number of ancient ruins and pyramids in this style are scattered across the island. The alien artifact and machines also use this design aesthetic.
- Night of the Living Mooks: Monsters that seemingly assemble themselves from dismembered bodies appear in the later part of the game.
- No Ending: See Left Hanging above for more details.
- Personal Space Invader: The Panthers do this when they try to eat you.TotalBiscuit: "And there's—what?! Where the hell did that come from!?"
- Press X to Not Die: Quick-time button prompts are used for everything from escaping a panther mauling (see above) to healing yourself with bandages and alcohol.
- Resources Management Gameplay: A large focus of the game, being primarily billed as a survival game and all.
- Survival Sandbox
