Dead by Daylight is at its best when it’s producing scenes that could be straight out a B-movie slasher flick. For example, when playing the beta, I only narrowly avoided walking straight into the killer. I was walking through what looked to be an abandoned power station in the woods when I heard the telltale heartbeat that indicated the killer was near. There was nowhere decent to hide in the station except for one cupboard near the entrance. I hurried inside it, slamming the door a second before the killer came round the corner. He paused in the middle of the room, staring around, before strolling off. I let out a sigh of relief, only realising then that I’d been holding my breath the entire time.

When playing as the killer, however, the whole atmosphere is turned on its head. Watching survivors scurry away from you as you march towards them is a delight. The growing red light on your back as a survivor, that indicates the killer is breathing down your neck, is replaced with watching a player desperately try to vault through a window as you grab their leg and pull them back through. Dead by Daylight doesn’t shy away from the brutal nature of its inspirations and is all the better for it. I just wish they had spent a bit more time with it before booting it out of the door. The central idea of the game is fantastic, and well realised, but that’s pretty much the only leg it’s got to stand on.

Dead by Daylight can almost be broken down into two genres. For the survivors, it’s a horror game. You can pick from four survivors, all of whom have appropriate B-Movie backstories. Once the game starts, you’re plonked into the world with a terrified look on your face. Your goal is simply to escape. To do that, you need to fire up a set number of generators to power up a gate. Generators take time to fire up, though. They also throw QTEs at you while you’re doing it. Screw one up and the generator backfires, lighting you up to the killer like you just lit a firework. Unlike most QTEs, I rather like them. It forces you to split your focus between the generator and looking for your impending, violent death. If the killer finds you, well, I hope you have your running shoes on.

The survivors do have the edge on the stealth aspect though. Partly because the audio plays a distinct heartbeat whenever the killer is near but more so because of the different perspectives. The survivors play in third person, allowing you to look over your shoulder as you go. It quickly becomes a necessity, as the killer’s speed means he can bear down on you very fast. You need to always have an eye on the horizon and listen for that heartbeat. The killer, conversely, plays in first person with a narrow FOV. It makes it harder for them to spot anyone but in a chase they are much faster. It’s a nice way of balancing the two parties using simple game mechanics. An elegant solution to a problem that other games in the genre, notably Damned, have proposed. That if you give one member of the party a giant chainsaw, you need to find some way to re-level the playing field.

There’s a pleasant balance throughout most of the game, actually. While the killer can run faster than the survivors in a straight line, the survivors are better at parkour. If you’re being chased, you can quickly vault through a window to put a bit of space between you both. You can also throw down barricades to impede or, if you time it right, stun the killer. Chases are thrilling because of this. While nine times out of ten a killer will get you eventually, the parkour aspect allows you to lengthen the chase. There were multiple times in chases where I thought I’d gotten away, only for them to come barrelling around the corner. All the while, the other survivors were getting the generators up and running. The lack of communication with your public teammates (not even a text chat) may be offputting to some but I found it added more to this atmosphere. I was running through the forest, killer nipping at heels, praying my teammates were doing their jobs. Alliances were fragile; there were many ‘sacrifices to the greater cause’.

Speaking of sacrifices: the killer. Playing as the killer is hilarious, which probably says terrible things about me as a person. There are currently three to choose from, the Trapper (who lays bear traps), the Wraith (who can go invisible but can’t attack while cloaked, the weakest of the bunch) and the Hillbilly (who has a chainsaw). Each is fun to play as but I prefer the Trapper just for the thrill of hearing a bear trap snap. Chasing as the killer is fun too but in a different way. Running survivors leave ‘scratches’ on the ground on walls, leading you to them. There’s a certain gleeful inevitability to the chase as the killer. Once you’ve found and brought down a survivor, you need to lug them to a meathook. You can imagine what happens then. Once they’re hooked for long enough, they are sacrificed to the ‘Entity’, which removes them from the game. Survivors can remove friends from meathooks, so you need a constant vigil.

Finding and securing survivors requires some decent cunning, for which I have my many bear traps. The gameplay for both sides is quite challenging and fun at its heart. Dead by Daylight’s problem is there’s not really a whole lot to go with it. There are only three maps (the MacMillan Estate, Coldwind Farm and the Autohaven Wreckers) at the moment, though they come with four variations. These variations don’t do much more than add in another building or shuffle things around, so I tend to discount it. A bit more variety on maps would be welcome, especially with the wealth of film inspiration to pick from. I’m hoping this will come further down the line, hopefully along with an update to make the Wraith worth it. It can be used well, but the delay before you can attack after uncloaking (and simply how noticeable the active camouflage is) makes it the weakest of the bunch so far.

There’s also the progression system, called the Bloodweb, which I have a few issues with. Having a non-linear progression system is not a bad choice per se. Potentially you can spec into the areas you want without having to push through a load of fluff. Dead by Daylight doesn’t do that. It’s nod to non-linearity is to offer you a small web of randomly generated choices each level. You have to get them all to go up a level. Not damning by itself, as it encourages you to switch around perks as they appear, but most of the web is taken up by items or offerings. These are one use jobs (if you die carrying an item it disappears), turning the Bloodweb into a glorified shop screen. It just doesn’t feel like we’re being rewarded for perseverance when we’re just getting the same stuff over and over.

The most damning problem of all with Dead by Daylight is the server issues. Can someone explain to me what happened to server lists? Was there some secret meeting that I wasn’t privy to where everyone decided that server lists were the work of the devil? As a result, we have to rely on matchmaking, which more often than not throws up ‘Failed to join the game’, meaning waiting times can get irritating. The only way to create a lobby is to be a killer but as everyone wants to be one… you can imagine. Couple this with a number of graphical bugs reported by my friends (though it worked fine on my end) and you have a game that could’ve done with a month or two more in the oven.

The fact that it released two days after its beta closed is surely a telling sign. Feels a bit too much like a director showing a cut of his film to a test audience and then just releasing it before they had time to give him feedback. So it’s rough around the edges and rather threadbare. But digging through all of that and you find an extremely appealing core, with a phenomenal atmosphere and some good animation and design work. While it feels a little hurried out of the door, Dead by Daylight achieves the majority of its goals already. The crucial one being allowing me flit between giggling murder and crying to myself in a dirty old cupboard.



Pros

-Core idea is fantastic

-Atmosphere is top notch

-Good animation work, with some nice smaller touches

-Killers all play differently, with different strengths

-Good music/sound design

-Both sides feel balanced and equally fun to play



Cons

-Progression feels unsatisfying

-Multiple server issues

-Wraith feels weaker than the others

-Graphical bugs and glitches

-No in-game voice chat (not a con for me personally)



Dead by Daylight

Developer: Behavior Interactive

Publisher: Starbreeze Studios

Release Date: June 14th 2016

Play it on: PC

