Supermassive Games’ spin-off game for the Dead by Daylight universe is fast approaching its September 3rd release date, offering players who have been intersted in the original lore for the assymetrical multiplayer horror game a deeper and darker look into Dead by Daylight. The Casting of Frank Stone finds a place on Supermassive Games’ release list nicely – it’s a narrative experience that allows player choices to impact how the story unfolds, much like their previous releases such as Until Dawn, and that means every character you come to know and potentially love could be gone with one simple click during a skill check, a quick-timed event, or just a choosing incorrectly from dialogue options.
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In the preview I play as Sam, a sherrif’s deputy who is looking for a missing child, and you get the sense fairly quickly that Sam is the only one taking finding the child seriously. The search for the missing child has led Sam to a creepy steel mill in the town of Cedar Hills, using a flashlight that doesn’t give off nearly enough light to see what could be lurking in the dark (they never do in these things…) as he explores the location in the dark, following the increasing smell of death to – you might’ve guessed it – the mill’s furnace. After failing a skill check that resulted in a broken flashlight (honestly the worst thing that could’ve happened, my heartrate was through the roof) and making the correct quick choices toward the end of the preview, I was able to rescue the missing child and thwart Frank Stone’s plans. It’s not a happy ending, though. A mysterious figure, a woman named Augustine Lieber, follows the rescue by appearing to deliver a rather nefarious monologue about the Entity – and there’s still plenty ahead in the game from there.
The events of the preview act as a Prologue to the full game, setting the tone and establishing a small taste of the story of Frank Stone. We know from marketing materials that the game will center on a group of younger folks in the modern day investigating the history of Frank Stone and uncovering supernatural elements to his story as the narrative develops, and based on the time I spent in the game alone my mind is swirling with the possibilities for the story ahead.
If you’re playing The Casting of Frank Stone because you’re a horror fan (you sort of have to be to purchase a game like this), Supermassive has delivered on tone and environmental expectations – I feel confident in saying that this early on based only on one location. The Prologue was atmospheric and continually worked to build a feeling of suspense and trepidation in its player. As I mentioned before, Sam is exploring the dark mill at night with only his flashlight to offer a visual field around him, and even though you feel safe from too much jumping out at you this early in the game, you still can’t help but wonder what could be hiding behind a corner or waiting at the bottom of the stairs for you as you make your way through the mill.
A welcome departure from the norm for Supermassive Games is a third person perspective, which makes exploration loads easier compared to other titles previously released by the studio. With control of the camera in this third person view it allows you to take in as much of the setting as you can, and like with any other Supermassive title there are items to collect in the environments. This particular inclusion ended up being my favorite part of playing through the Prologue, outside of getting my heartrate up a healthy amount for the day – the collectibles that you can find in the world are already some of my favorite video game collectibles. I don’t want to give away exactly what these items are because I feel every The Casting of Frank Stone player should get to experience the same amount of unhinged joy that I did upon picking up a specific item, but I will say that my slasher franchise loving heart became immediately impatient to complete the collections in this game.
What will be interesting to see upon the game’s full release is how this piece of the narrative for Dead by Daylight fits into the larger franchise as a whole – what exactly does The Casting of Frank Stone have to do with the Entity and the Fog, and how will the events we see unfold in this game impact the future of Dead by Daylight stories? For now these questions will remain shrouded in mystery, though only for a short couple of weeks as The Casting of Frank Stone releases September 3rd for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X – and the one hour preview of the game I conducted is enough to have me eager to experience the rest of the narrative as soon as possible.
