In a post-nuclear destroyed world, you are by yourself and trying to stay alive. You must find and cook food, collect water, take radiation pills, keep your temperature at bay, and find a place to sleep that’s safe. There are a lot of things going on that you must take notice of. You can check your stats at any time, watching them get lower and finding things to stop yourself from dying. You will have to search areas thoroughly and in a good frame of time. The game is broken up into levels which are various areas you must survive. There are a few dangers lurking around too, specifically a weird looking mutant that hates loud sounds. Besides just doing your best not to die, you also must solve a few puzzles, usually centered around electricity. There are a few safes and electronic door locks that you must figure out too, based on hints from what other people have written on the walls, or in notes. It’s a rough world out there, and you’re alive for now. Writing everything in your diary must be worth something to someone later on right? If there is anyone else left, that is.

Here’s what I liked:

Beautiful Tragic World — Nuclear war is a very scary thing indeed. You’re thrown into this world, and there’s no one to help you. The game progresses through areas. Each area can be quite different, there is a lot to look at and explore. It’s linear without feeling too much so. You keep a diary and talk to yourself a lot. Being alone in that kind of environment means to stay sane, you must hear a voice talking even if it’s your own. There are areas that are very dark, and you need a flashlight while looking for a generator to turn on the lights. Even worse is when you need to put on a gas mask, another stat to keep track of so that you don’t get stuck. It’s always a relief when you can get lights turned on or go into a new area that takes place during the daytime. A real sense of relief happens. The graphics are actually pretty nice, they look really good and the atmosphere does feel like something went terribly wrong. There are notes scattered around that you can read that usually give you hints on what to do or where to find things for puzzles. Though there isn’t really much of a story, the things you read instead paint a picture of what life was like before the events of nuclear destruction. How everything was quite normal and then one day just nothing. I like that most things are still intact. It’s not like you’re in the blast zone, but seeing the effects of the surrounding areas. It’s a sad environment that looks great.

Save System — While there is auto saves, the best way to make sure you don’t get stuck is to make manual saves. I’m not sure if there’s a limit, but you can save on many different files to make sure if you do make a mistake, you can reload at various points and try again. Surviving can be tough to manage because you’re exploring an area and as time ticks by, your need for food and water increases. Saving should always be on your mind just in case you take too long in an area or take fall damage. You face major consequences if you don’t manage everything efficiently. Without saving a lot, you could end up starting a chapter with very little chance of succeeding because you didn’t make sure you got all the resources needed before proceeding. This may seem a little difficult and stressful, that’s because it is.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Looting is the Real Catastrophe — One of the most important things you do in this game is loot the areas around you. That’s what you’ll spend most of your time doing. Hunting down things you need for a generator or camp, trying to stay alive. There is an in game hint system that after a long time, will give you the location of something you need. However, sometimes it becomes useless. Not only will you be losing precious time waiting for it, but often it leads you to the generator you’re missing an item for. It will not give you another hint, you will have to find it on your own. The button for collecting an item is the same as jumping or interacting, therefore you are often times blocked from jumping over unless you angle it just right. Just pick it up you say? Well a lot of times you can’t because you are full of specific items at just three. You will not be able to pick up half of the items because you are full. Then when you really need them? No where to be found. You must set up camp sometimes and after you complete an area, you will lose all of those specific materials. This leads to a lot of frustration because you must craft things to survive. There is a temperature pill that cannot be found anywhere, it must be crafted. There seems to be no real reason for the temperature to go up. Sometimes you’re okay, other times you need it. What’s worse is it seems everything you must craft needs water, which you also must drink to survive. I have had to reload checkpoints several times after finding items just so I could go do a “perfect run” through the area in order to stop myself from dying. It doesn’t add to the difficulty, indeed it’s just a scavenger hunt I would have been fine with if you had much more room to hold items. This will break the fun of the game for many people, as it did with me.

Upgrading — In order to upgrade a few perks, you must first find the appropriate books. These books are well hidden, and it may be half the game before you stumble upon one only to realize that was even something you had to do. Once you get to a crafting table for the first time, you may be surprised that all parts you were grabbing aren’t going to help you do anything without a book. These books can really make a difference too. One I got (luckily), was for using a device that detects if something is contaminated. Now that I have upgraded it, I never have to use that tool again and it’s a huge time saver. I can’t imagine going through the game without it not, having to pull it out (which takes place of your flashlight) every time I saw water or food. The upgrades are also pretty expensive. I feel I had really scoured every area and barely had enough parts to get one thing upgraded to max.

Wasteland of Time — I don’t mind games that take a long time, but this one feels like it takes a long time. It just seems never ending. You rinse and repeat every time too for the most part. Try to survive the area, do a few of the same puzzles, and hopefully find the items needed for a bed and fire so you can survive. Because of the discussed amount of items being an issue, it also makes you have to do a lot of backtracking. If you’re full on water for example (which you need to craft just about everything), you have to try and remember where it was. Sometimes the levels feel like a real maze. So backtracking isn’t always very easy. I really feel like I would have enjoyed the game more if it was half of the time spent playing it. The longer I played, the more annoyed at it that I got. I was enjoying myself for hours, then it just hit me, I wasn’t having fun and it felt like a chore. You never want a game to feel like a chore, that’s not the point of them. Yet somehow, this game really pushes you to feel like you’re doing errands as a guy likely with no real way out of the situation he’s in. I mean, the title says it all. We’re just filling out the pages of the diary of a dead man.

Wrap-up

I can’t say I hated my time playing Dead Man’s Diary, but I also can’t say I enjoyed it all that much. It felt like it went on for way too long, overstaying it’s welcome by a high margin. Having so many chapters really wore me down, and I know I had a good chunk of it to go. What stopped me playing wasn’t me giving up, but simply I did not have enough time to do a puzzle during a nuclear launch sequence. Some of the chapters are tedious and not something you enjoy playing multiple times just to get it right. If you get stuck and don’t have a recent save, you really do get stuck. The game can be very tedious, but some may find it fun, especially if you enjoy having to manage food, health, water, etc. The graphics are also very crisp looking, with good attention to detail and surprisingly a lot of different looking environments throughout the many chapters. I can’t say it enough how extremely great it looks. If they had an update there are too many things I would want. Upgrading without needing to find books, faster pinpoints when looking for camp materials, a lower difficulty, not needing water to craft almost everything, and the ability to run faster. It really isn’t a bad game, for what it is, it just lasted way too long. A lot of work is sadly overshadowed by the flaws where frustration can ruin the fun.

Score: Limited Appeal

Dead Man’s Diary was published by TML-Edition GmbH and developed by TML-Studios on Xbox One. It was released on July 12 2023, for $19.99. A copy was provided for review