Dead by Daylight

Dead by Daylight takes the core conventions of a horror slasher film and translates them into a competitive, asymmetrical game. But in a twist for the genre, the four people who play the survivors are largely helpless when forced to face off against the monster of the week. Instead, the survivors are spending their time trying to activate the tasks that will allow them to escape the map, while the killer is trying to ensure that no one else is left alive.

The core gameplay here is pretty standard, but there's a lot of components here to mix things up, and the environment is largely procedurally generated to make sure that both the killers and victims have to spend a bit of time to get their bearings. And while the tasks may be pretty standardized, the pace really matches the tone of a slasher flick. Victims are forced to first repair four generators, then turn on a switch, and finally escape to the exit. This creates a natural pace that's easy to fall into but still requires a decent amount of improvisation. While the early game sees victims scrambling over the map to find the objectives and the killer having to content with multiple hotspots on the map, the latter two acts create some bottlenecks that force direct conflict. Despite the outsized power levels of the killers, the imbalance of numbers means that neither side is a sure shot to win.

Those bottlenecks also force players to think about their own self-interest. There's only one killer, and that means that using other players as decoys is an effective and sometimes necessary choice. It also means evaluating the risk and reward of actions. The killer needs to make sacrifices at designated meat hooks with survivors he's captured, and there's a real sense of tension to determining whether you should mount a rescue mention of a fellow survivor or focus your attention on immediate objectives while the killer is distracted. Characters have some chances to be hooked and survived, but the third will lead to an automatic death. And when characters die, they stay dead.

While Dead by Daylight started with a pretty modest roster, it's expanded significantly in the years that have followed. There are dozens of killers to choose from. Each has their own unique abilities, and many are horror movie monsters culled from popular franchises. Many even come with unique maps that draw on your memory of popular films. There are also 20 survivors to choose from. Their skills may not be as flashy as those of the killers, but there are definitely customization options. All of the characters released have perks that can be unlocked over lifetime play, and plenty of cosmetic options are available as well. All told, it's a well-balanced and feature-rich approach to asymmetrical gameplay that smartly manages to capture the aesthetic and pacing of a horror movie.