Day of Defeat is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game set in the European theatre of World War II on the Western front.

Set in the midst of World War II, Day of Defeat includes no single-player campaign, with focus left only on the game's multiplayer aspects.

Day of Defeat is a multiplayer first-person shooter that simulates squad-level infantry combat between the adversaries of World War II's European Theatre; the Allies and the Axis powers.

[2] Day of Defeat's initial retail offering included fifteen maps, each depicting different scenarios with variation in size and thematic locations.

Friendly-fire, which was previously enabled by default, was disabled in the retail version,[2] bleeding - losing small amounts of health over time caused by injuries which "bled" - was removed, and a mini-map was added to more easily facilitate navigation and cooperation between fellow team members.

UI improvements, including identifiers for differentiating team members from enemies and help messages that acted as a tutorial for new players, were also introduced in the retail release.

[3] Reviewers also praised Day of Defeat for its promotion of teamwork through purposefully tight corridors that force players to cooperate, lest they be killed by an enemy outside their field of vision.

[3][10] Both GameSpy and GameSpot levied criticism against the game for its sub-par visuals and "downright ugly" color palette, blaming the aging GoldSrc engine for the aesthetic issues.

The editors wrote, "Made by amateur developers not yet of American drinking age, Day of Defeat absorbed entire weeks of office LAN play.