Dead by Daylight [official site] has lurched up the Steam charts with its 1v4, horror movie killer vs. plucky teens, multiplayer action. Basically, a supernatural slasher tries to sacrifice teens to dark gods by hanging them from meat hooks, while the teens try to evade the killer while they fix generators so they can escape. From what I’ve seen, it looks like a lark with pals but… that’s a bit tricky when it lacks multiplayer party support. Fear not! (Fear less?) Parties are coming, developers Behaviour say, along with more maps, killers, and so on.

Behaviour explain in a Steam post that they’ve been keeping an eye on things since last week’s launch and are prioritising game-breaking bugs. “We are also tweaking a lot of values to make the game more balanced, to make the matchmaking smarter and to make the ranking system more rewarding and fairer,” they say.

They’re also working on a “survive with friends” mode, which they say “will allow people to group together as survivors, in ranked mode and join other random people to play the game.” No firm word yet on when this curious absence will be remedied. Beyond that, Behaviour add:

“We also have people working on new content, at the same time. We want to provide you with new killers, new survivors and new maps. This is, for us, a very important thing. We want this game to be alive and to stay exciting to play. By adding more content, more variations, we can make sure the game is always fun to play. It will grow and get deeper and more satisfying. At least that’s the plan.”

They’re hoping to release some sort of patch every week, though some will just bring bug fixes or balance tweaks rather than new content.

Dead by Daylight is £13.49/17,99€/$17.99 on Steam right now. Publishers Starbreeze are offering another 10% off to people who own Payday 2.

To explain a bit more, Dead by Daylight is a 1v4 multiplayer game set in procedurally-generated “killing grounds” with a variety of tilesets. The killer tries to sacrifice teens by chasing them down, grabbing them, and hanging them on meathooks to suffer and struggle until the skies open and insectile dark gods draw them up. Teens need to fix four power generators in each arena so they can open the door and escape, along the way dodging the killer, helping friends who get in trouble, and maybe scavenging helpful items. Killers move faster and their different classes have abilities like bear traps and invisibility, but teens are more agile and can knock down obstacles to block paths. Them’s your basics.



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Our Adam is hoping to have a go at Dead by Daylight, I know. I’ve not played myself but have seen a bit in my worktime idle second-screen YouTube-watching and it does look fun with friends. Above is that nice lad ‘Northernlion’ and his chums playing the beta.