[PAX East 2016] Dead by Daylight preview

Elevator pitch for Behaviour Interactive’s Dead by Daylight? It’s the asymmetrical, human team vs. powerful killer gameplay of Evolve filtered through the horror movie genre.

Dead by Daylight, due out June 14, pits a team of four players against one player-controlled, classic slasher flick-inspired killer. Well, maybe it’s more accurate it pits the killer against the humans, as all they can hope to do is escape. Unlike Evolve or Left 4 Dead’s versus mode, the human characters have almost no means to fight back against the killer. Aside from some special abilities that can be gained from a card-based currency and experience system the developer’s at PAX East weren’t ready to get into, the most they can hope for is a flashlight to stun the killer and a wall to throw in their way.

The objective of the human team, in horror and life, wouldn’t you say, is to survive. To do that, the team has to evade the killer while trying to repair and activate several generators powering a gate that’s keeping them locked in. The killer, controlled in the first-person as opposed to the behind-the-back view for the humans, has to, uh, kill. Despite, in this case, wielding an obviously Friday The 13th-inspired machete, the lumbering killer can’t just hack and slash the humans to pieces. He can only incapacitate them before then carrying them onto some gruesome hooks. If they can’t free themselves by rapidly jamming on the space bar or by being rescued by a teammate, they’re goners.

At the start of my demo, which only had three human team players, I slowly crouched around the forested and procedurally-generated map, cautious not to sprint lest I leave glowing tracks for the killer to see. I skulked around the decrepit walls of an abandoned structure, finding one of those generators inside. I started the repairs by holding down the interaction button and waited for the bar to fill up. It takes awhile with just one person, but can be sped up if you correctly nail the quicktime events that pop up.

After a moment of repairing, I started to hear the pulse of a heartbeat, which my developer guide told me meant the killer was near. As I abandoned the generator and tried to crouch-walk away the heartbeat got faster and faster. Just when I turned a corner, I saw him move in the opposite direction. He hadn’t seen me, but I wanted to keep it that way, so I walked a maze through the ruins towards where I thought another generator lay.

Not a moment later and I heard a scream and was alerted to a glowing silhouette of the killer hosting my teammate onto his shoulder as he carried her away and onto the hook. I made my way over to her and pulled her off while he was still occupied with finding another victim. We went back to the generators, but were again forced to disperse. This time, I paired up with our third teammate when the killer came for us.

I could hear the heartbeat pounding and I was starting to get genuinely tense and scared as he closed in on us. Panning the camera around looking for him, the killer suddenly popped into frame and I burst into a sprint away from him. I cut a zig zag through some debris, running around in circles, until I had the bright idea to try and snake my way around to my teammate. Like they say, you don’t have to outrun the bear, just your friend.

My shameful plan worked, the killer abandoned his pursuit for me as my teammate couldn’t navigate his way around as deftly. Using the time bought with his life I was able to finish the repairs to the generators before hauling ass to the exit with my other remaining teammate. We got out of there alive, but were we really the killers, man?

Dead by Daylight managed to impart a sense of tension and helplessness most games seem afraid to give to the player. I really had a similar experience to watching a horror movie, it was the best kind of fright/thrill.

Some things were a tad clunky. Getting the interactions like fixing the generator or getting an ally off the hook didn’t always seem to take on the first button press and, although the overall look, mood and presentation was great, character models and some of the more technical graphical aspects weren’t so hot.

Creative director Ash Pannell told me there was still a lot they were keeping close to the chest prior to the upcoming release. For one, there’s the aforementioned card system that would let players earn visual customization options and some in-game items. Second, they did say there would be plenty more killers that just the Jason-clone, and they would likely be getting a lot more varied than just imitations of movie favorites.

Dead by Daylight is scheduled for release on PC  for $19.99 / €19.99 with a deluxe edition that includes a digital soundtrack, art book and more for $29.99 / €29.99.