The Texas Chain Saw Massacre released recently, arriving onto the growing asymmetrical horror video game sector. For years, Friday the 13th has held a presence within the genre, although that time is set to come to an end very soon. Meanwhile, Evil Dead: The Game sits somewhere at an unhappy medium, languishing on the gaming market with a dwindling player count.
All three of these games have one thing in common of importance to this piece: they constantly find themselves being compared to a game which has been reviewed twice already, and is now receiving a third InReview article: Dead by Daylight. While two of the three aforementioned games are seeing the light soon, Dead by Daylight has continued to be all the rage of horror gaming, still seeing peak player counts that even exceeded those of the shiny new Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
On the gaming market as a whole, this 4v1 asymmetrical horror bonanza has some impressive claims to make. Not many games can claim to have a seven year anniversary. The list of games that have been able to stay relevant for that long is quite sparse- it will soon include the iconic Battle Royale Fortnite, and there are classics such as Grand Theft Auto V, Skyrim and Minecraft. Being spoken of in the same breath as those games is quite the feat.
Let’s have a look at how “DbD” is doing these days- we will analyze why it has developed such incredible staying power, and what it could do to remain a presence in the gaming industry.
Crossovers
Behavior Interactive’s knack for securing licensing agreements has been no secret. DbD has essentially turned into the Smash Bros of the horror genre. You can quite easily find yourself playing as Resident Evil’s Nemesis, running around on Halloween’s Haddonfield, attempting to track down and kill Ash Williams of Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Quentin Smith, Nemesis’ old rival Jill Valentine, or even the actor Nicolas Cage! This massive blend of iconic characters brings fans from a myriad of franchises together for the one thing they all hold in common: horror.
The theoretical endless number of unique IPs that could find themselves in this game has spawned endless speculation over who could be next to join. At the time of writing, the Alien franchise has recently seen The Xenomorph and Ellen Ripley join our massive cast of 72 total characters. With the horror genre having a very long history predating even the conventional television, much less video gaming, there is no end in sight for the number of representatives this game could harbor.
Balance
In 2019, when we first looked at this game, competitive balance was a total joke. Things were better, but not by much, when InReview reviewed this game in 2021. Here, in 2023, balance has since shifted into a focal point for Behavior Interactive. In 2022, they released a patch that made significant alterations to a staggering 40 perks in the game. The objective of this patch was to allow other, unseen perks to flourish in the game’s meta. It was also to knock the meta perks of the day down a peg, to bring them closer in line to their competitors. The result was a drastic shift in general gameplay where skill is much more essential to victory than it once was. No longer can Survivors turn a two minute chase into a team-wide victory, and no longer can Killers competently “tunnel” or, strictly focus one Survivor player out of the game as efficiently as they once could.
In the current day, it can be safely argued that the more skilled, experience side will likely prevail in the end. It is hard to ask anything more of the game from a balance perspective.
The Dredge
Since we last reviewed this game in 2021, Behavior Interactive has obtained a few new licenses and made plenty of original characters as well. This piece argues that the original Killer, The Dredge, is by far and large their best work over that period of time. The Dredge uniquely possesses the capability to teleport to any locker of the player’s choosing, giving it the ability to quickly arrive and put pressure on Survivors who may have been attempting to advance their own interests unimpeded. The Dredge also brings forth the Nightfall mechanic. Every 60 seconds, the entirety of the map will go completely dark. Survivors will not see The Dredge except for at a close distance, and it will not emit a Terror Radius or other auditory cue that will indicate its presence nearby.
The Dredge is an amazingly designed Killer for a few reasons. The most straightforward is that it is one of the more balanced characters in the game; it can move quickly and keep up with Survivors’ generator repair efforts with its large map mobility, and it can sometimes do so silently with the Nightfall mechanic. However, its capabilities are somewhat limited in chase, and Survivors can place one-time locks on lockers that serve to slow its teleportation hijinx.
The Dredge is an amazing Killer not just for what it can do in game, however. The Dredge is a stunning, masterful display of actual horror in this game. It’s too easy for this game to lose its tension amidst the monotony of constantly repairing generators, getting hook saves, and running the Killer. Killers such as The Nemesis and The Artist are powerful enough to command respect, but moreso with a fast, tense, action-packed dynamic rather than strictly horror.
With The Dredge, you never know when it’s going to target a locker near your character. This becomes especially dangerous during Nightfall, when The Dredge can easily sneak up on inattentive Survivors. Finally, music accompanying The Dredge is enthralling. During Nightfall, a slow, somber acapella can be heard with agonizing screams in the background. When in chase, however, this quickly changes to an absolutely heart-pumping electric guitar and heavy drums duet that just goes all out; the manner in which it’s delivered takes the tension from zero all the way to one hundred instantly. It’s enough to befuddle even the most grizzled of Dead by Daylight players.
Nicolas Cage
Like The Dredge, Nicolas Cage’s impact on this game is both in and out of core gameplay. Remarkably, this was the first time the likeness of a real world person was brought to the game. Dead by Daylight has rightfully been praised for the many IPs it has been able to bring to the game, but bringing in a celebrity goes beyond simply being fluid with multiple franchises.
Like The Dredge, Nicolas Cage has a lot to bring to core gameplay as well. His three unique perks add a lot of spontaneity to the game, and not just in novel ways. His three perks are viable on top of being fun to use. Plot Twist is the stand out, allowing the player to intentionally down themselves once per game when injured, and potentially heal themselves to full after a moderate period of time. This concept is humble, funny but also quite powerful as well.
Progression
With an evergrowing stack of characters, more and more perks are getting added to the game with each Chapter. The list has never been too great for the long time players to keep up with, but newcomers were once up the creek without a paddle.
The 40-perk balance patch of 2022 was shortly followed up by a massive update to the game’s progression system, streamlining it for players of all experience levels. Those who had unlocked everything prior got to retain their progress, but instead of essentially having to take one character’s perks and eventually get them on the player’s desired character(s), now once a character’s perks have been unlocked via the third Prestige, they’re automatically unlocked for all characters.
Nowadays, raising multiple characters is very easy, as they’re all done so simultaneously as far as perks go. The bloodpoint cost of items and offerings was reduced as well, making it easy to accumulate resources on characters as well. This helps to counteract the monotony of grinding by making the workload much more reasonable, for veteran player and newcomer alike.
Behavior’s Design Philosophy
In times’ past, Behavior Interactive preferred mainly balancing this game by simply introducing perks or items for players to use. For example, Borrowed Time was an effective method at disrupting the Killer “tunneling” players, while the Corrupt Intervention perk was a bandage fix for Killers who cannot immediately apply pressure effectively on Survivors right out of the gate.
Simply slapping perks into the game and calling it a day was a terrible idea. After all, what if the player cannot access these perks? Worse yet, should a player be required to devote their strategy towards perks just so they can have a fun time playing the game? This design philosophy was heavily flawed, and resulted in the state of the game being in an arduous position two years ago.
Now, Behavior Interactive has finally, definitively changed course. The effect granted by Borrowed Time was simply made base-kit, something all Survivors can do without needing to equip the perk. Generators were made to have slower repair speeds, giving slower Killers a bit more time to catch up. The general idea is, Behavior Interactive started tinkering with the game “at base” instead of simply introducing optional add-ons to sloppily solve the problem. This is indeed a standard practice, but it’s a standard practice the company has done exceedingly well.
Skins
Dead by Daylight has been host to. amyriad of different character skins for a long time. What’s important to note over the last two years is the increased interest in producing “Ultra Rare” cosmetics for both sides. In most cases, these haven’t simply been flashy visual modifications for the characters themselves- they’ve been turned into a means of creating new characters entirely. For example, The Huntress has an Ultra Rare skin which retains all. ofher usual properties, but turns her into folklore horror character Baba Yaga. The Blight has a skin closely emulating Charon, the Greek ferryman of Hades. The Trapper, the game’s very first Killer, has a skin turning him into Krampus, another popular folklore horror face.
While aesthetically pleasing skins are very much still in the game, cosmetics have evolved from simply being fresh new coats of paint. They’ve turned into a way to include even more characters from other franchises and sections of entertainment. Given the game’s reputation as a crossover haven, this fits. the game like a glove.
Bots
Since our last review two years ago, bots have developed quite a presence in this game. For starters, if a Survivor player disconnects from the game for any reason, they will seamlessly be replaced by a bot who will inherit their perk build and any item they were carrying at that time. The bots themselves are hardly expert players, but they do serve the purpose of preventing games from falling apart when a player disconnects. Such an occurrence once had a tendency to give the Killer player an essentially free win, making the game feel largely pointless for the other three players. Resolving this dilemma was a great way to keep games consistently balanced.
Bots have a presence in welcoming new players to the game, as well. For a long time, there has been a tutorial that allowed players to play with bots, but until 2022, all this used to be was a Trapper with zero perks facing a Meg, Claudette, Dwight and Nea with zero perks or items. Now, bots can be used in Custom matches. It’s essentially like old school Combat Training in Call of Duty: the player can choose whatever Killer or Survivor they have access to, can give them any perks or items of their choosing, and can load into a fully functional game where bots fill in any slots not taken by real players.
Bots have had a massive beneficial impact on the game, making it far more accessible and stable than it once was.
While it has taken many strides and is overall an extremely successful game, there are cracks in this armor yet. Let’s see what Dead by Daylight hasn’t done so well or isn’t doing so well currently.
It Has A Greater Skill Curve
In 2019 and even 2021, the game was pretty straightforward. Survivors still do not require college degrees, per se, but the game is much more complex than it is now. The nerfing of so many ‘meta’ perks forced a large change in strategy for both Survivors and Killers that made outfitting ‘builds’ a more precarious affair. Instead of simply loading up on perks which strictly focus on generators as both sides once did, particularly the Killer side has a steeper uphill climb to make these days. Perks intended to slow the speed of generator repairs have been modified to be far less effective. On the other hand, the time needed to finish repairing a generator has since been increased, and tools used to expedite the process are also a lot less efficient.
For the Survivor side, having incompetent teammates is more detrimental than it once was. It is harder to maintain the Killer’s attention in chase for a long period of time, and the time the Killer spent chasing you doesn’t go as far as it once did. However, Killers cannot simply lean heavily on perks designed to halt such progress anymore, so errant and careless play is harder to compensate for than it once was.
While there are more tools to learn how to play the game and helpful items and perks are easier to access, all the tools in the world will not make a skilled carpenter, so to speak. The game isn’t exactly ‘hard’ to learn per se, but it’s much less straightforward than it once was.
The Skull Merchant
It’s a wonder of wonders that this Killer even made it past quality control testing. This Killer is a disgrace, both from a gameplay perspective and a thematic point of view. If she was to be removed tomorrow, few if any on either side are likely to complain.
The Skull Merchant’s power, to sum it up simply, involves her being able to place Drones around the map which have various effects. By far the most generally effective and used is the Scout function. As it would seem, the Scout function gives the Skull Merchant the ability to locate Survivors. It also causes them to be vulnerable to one-hit downs if they linger in the area, which is clearly a bad combination.
The power has drawbacks and can be played around by a solid team. The problem is mostly that such a team needs to be fairly well coordinated, which is not possible unless playing the game communicating directly with friends. There is no game chat, so it would need to be a “pre-made” lobby.
Games against the Skull Merchant, whether she wins or loses, have a tendency to easily become lengthy affairs, reminiscent of “hatch stand-off” days of the game. The Skull Merchant can simply attach her drones to three generators within close proximity of each other, making it impossible to repair these generators without tripping off her drones and being in a very bad position. Discouraging players from engaging with the game and punishing them when they do is obviously a bad idea.
The worst part of all this is, The Skull Merchant fits the idea of a horror game remarkably poorly. Since her drones maintain a very active presence, loudly and wildly point themselves out and make the approach of The Skull Merchant very predictable, there is never a ‘fear of the unknown’ with this Killer. In fact, there’s nothing about this Killer that even seems to fit a horror game, including aesthetically. She would be a better fit perhaps for Grand Theft Auto or maybe Fortnite and her existence in this game is a stain on the horror industry.
Her unique perks aren’t even worth using in the game, either. What was the point?
In spite of what little the game may have going against it, Dead by Daylight has evolved into a champion of the horror industry, specifically video gaming. It’s difficult to label games as being truly unique these days, but it’s safe to say that no other video game will climb anywhere near as many legal and design hurdles to create an experience quite like this one. You can easily enjoy this game for hours upon hours on end, with or without friends, regardless of your playstyle. This is another difficult claim for any game to make. Despite the fact we are not labelling this game as completely perfect, there is not a single person I have ever met or can think of that I would not recommend this game to. Let’s give this legendary piece a well deserved S for a grade, and move on.
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