Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: dead by daylight, e3, e3 2016, entertainment, games, video games

E3 2016 Preview: Dead by Daylight Wants To Kill You

By Madeline Ricchiuto

Behavior Interactive's Dead by Daylight matches 5 random players together into a "nightmare" that they will never wake up from. The 1 v 4 asymmetric game style should be familiar for those who played Evolve, for Dead by Daylight one player is the Killer, the other four try to survive.

The game launched June 14 and revealed two additional Killers, since in beta only the trapper killer was available. The two additional killers are a chainsaw wielding maniac ideal for chasing down survivors one on one and a wraith who is best for jump-scares.

The goal of the survivors, who are quicker at maneuvering and see from a third-person perspective, is to make it out of the enclosed forest area. They can do this by activating five generators around the map, or if they're the last survivor standing, they can escape through a trapdoor.

The goal of the killer – who plays in first person, is fast while moving in a straight line, but takes forever to move around obstacles – is to sacrifice all four of the survivors to the forest.

Immediately after dying, survivors can leave the game and join a new match, or stay and watch.

Dead by Daylight is available for demos at E3, though its notable that very few survivors have managed to make it out of a demo alive. Playing as a survivor, I died horrifically quickly, because I'm actually terrible at listening to advice like "the killer is faster than you, so go around obstacles to slow him down" or "you can knock things over onto the killer to stun him." So if you do swing by the booth to play or download the game on Steam, do make sure to have a strategy while playing as a survivor.

Mathieu Cote from Behavior Interactive told me that, based on statistics gathered in beta, the two female survivors have a higher success rate than either of the male survivors, though the development team isn't quite sure why.

One of the rather unique features of the game is the lack of character's terror levels, "we don't care if the character is scared" Cote explained, since the main focus of the game is to get its players screaming their heads off. Survivors can meet and strategize while in the match lobby, determine who is bringing a med kit and who is bringing a toolbox, how to stick together to make repairs easy, or how to save their fellow victims from sacrifice. Meanwhile, the Killer is watching. They don't get to see the chat window, but they can look over the Survivor's loadouts and plan accordingly. The survivors have no idea which Killer they'll be facing, nor do they get to look him over while in the lobby.

Killers aren't balanced against one another, as they'll never be facing each other, so that is indeed something to look into.

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