RUTHLESS
DEAD BY DAYLIGHT offers up the most interesting cat-and-mouse multiplayer on the market.
By Luke Winkie
The Dead by Daylight premise is simple: four players take the roles of survivors in a Saw-like bloodsport, fixing generators to power an exit gate before hightailing it to safety. The fifth player is a killer who has to prevent the survivors from escaping, impaling them on meathooks and leaving them for an eldritch force. In 2016, it was received as a way to indulge in a brief blood orgy before migrating to more refined multiplayer games.
What I don’t think anyone saw coming was for Dead by Daylight to mature into one of the best multiplayer experiences you can play, with razor-sharp mechanical intrigue, an ultra-complex web of versatile builds and strategies, and a diverse suite of characters. What was a comedy-horror romp mutated into something much closer to League of Legends in terms of depth. It may be bewildering to consider that hardcore players can spend months scrutinising the relative power-level and optimisation path for Ghostface from Scream, but that’s where Dead by Daylight finds itself at the start of 2021: an esports-worthy venture hosted by Freddy Krueger, Bubba Sawyer, and Michael Myers.