Gideon’s Perspective
Dead by Daylight is a 9-year-old asymmetrical multiplayer game that is still going strong in 2025. I intentionally ignored the game for the longest time. I’m not a horror fan, be it movies or video games, and I tend to shy away from things that are creepy or gore-filled. That meant the entire concept always gave me the ick, and I just wrote it off.
That was a mistake. A friend recently got me to try it, and there’s a lot about this game that makes it really special. To be fair, Dead by Daylight has had 9 years of refinements, but I want to talk about some key things that I think really make it a great game that’s worth playing, even now.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
Dead by Daylight is an asymmetric multiplayer game, with one killer vs four survivors. A being known as the Entity has pulled killers and survivors from the multiverse to take part in its endless trials. This means that you will encounter original characters, but also licensed IP characters such as the Xenomorph, Leon Kennedy, Chuckie, and even…uh…Nicholas Cage as himself.
Now, I don’t want you to think that the game is some hodge-podge of characters with very little identity, unlike some other games with crossovers. These characters fit the theme, the universe, and even have some lore you can dig into about what’s happening within these trials and why. Each of them fits in pretty seamlessly in ways you would expect them to.
The gameplay, at least up front, reminds me a great deal of the old Spies vs Mercenaries game mode in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The survivors have a third-person view, which means they have much better visibility than the killer and play via stealth, attempting to avoid being discovered by the killer and attempting to escape from them when caught.
The survivors attempt to power a set of generators and escape. The Killer, on the other hand, is attempting to capture the survivors and place them on hooks for the entity to consume. The baseline gameplay for both the survivors and killers is very simple. But there is a ton of nuance and clever design that make playing both sides a deep and satisfying game of cat and mouse.
| Gideon’s Bias | Dead By Daylight Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: No | Publisher: Behaviour Interactive Inc |
| Hours Played: 90+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: Xbox Series X | Platforms: PC, Xbox Series, Xbox One, PS4/5, Switch |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Asymmetric Multiplayer Stealth |
| Mode Played: N/A | Price: $19.99 |
Surviving
Survivors must make skill checks when repairing generators or healing allies, and mistiming them makes noise that appears as a visual cue to the killer. They leave scratch marks when sprinting that the Killer can follow, and blood trails and grunts of pain when injured.
The first hit a survivor takes injures them, and getting hit again while injured puts them in a dying state where the killer can pick them up. They can attempt to wiggle free while the killer hauls them to a hook that will eventually consume them if an ally doesn’t rescue them. Getting hooked a third time is instant death, regardless.
Killers move faster than survivors, but survivors are more nimble. They can turn corners around obstacles faster and can vault through windows quicker. They can crouch in tall grass, behind obstacles, or hide in lockers. In a chase, they can even knock down pallets to stun the killer and force them to spend time breaking them or going around.
One of the biggest things that stand out to me when playing a survivor is just how well stealth actually works. Since you can see over obstacles via the third-person view, you have the ability to monitor a nearby killer and move around obstacles or tall grass to avoid being spotted. The features of the landscape hide you quite well, and I’ve hidden in plain sight multiple times by simply crouching in a bush.
There is no awkward stealth mode or invisibility mechanics. You simply hide by logical means, playing on the weaknesses of the killer’s first-person perspective, and it works brilliantly well. You leave scratch marks when running, but even that can be used to confound the killer. When I notice a killer tracking a teammate, I’ll often skirt past, leaving my own scratch marks, mixing them with my teammates to make it unclear where either of us went.
Getting chased is often a mind game with the killer about where you’re going or what you’re doing. You can bait them into a pallet, crisscross your path and crouch away, vault through windows, or even bait them into striking while dipping past their field of view. You can’t fight them directly, but depending on the items or perks you have, you do have some options.
One of my favorite builds allows me to sabotage hooks and makes my allies wiggle free more easily when I’m nearby. If I see a killer grab someone, I can sabotage the hook I think the killer is taking them to, buying my ally time to wiggle free with my bonus. I also like to use a perk that allows me to slam a locker, causing noise while hiding my own scratch marks for a few seconds. That way, I can draw the killer’s attention to protect my allies.
I also always love bringing a trusty flashlight. It takes some practice, but flashlights can be used to blind a killer, and if you blind them while they are carrying someone, it allows that ally to escape. That is, unless the killer rains on my parade by taking the Lightborn perk, which makes them immune to flashlights.
There are plenty of ways to play. A stealthy sneak, a friendly medic, an escape artist, or just someone who is really good at repairing the generators. Regardless, the core loop holds up remarkably well. I don’t think I’ve seen another game do multiplayer stealth so well, not without some kind of gimmick attached to it.
Killing
The Killer, on the other hand, plays in the first person, with a much narrower field of view, and must try to track down and stop the survivors before they accomplish their objectives. Various characters and perks can change how any given player goes about this game of cat and mouse, but a few baseline things universally apply.
Each killer has some unique powers to help them either track down or bring down the survivors. For Example, the Trapper can lay bear traps, the Doctor can make survivors go mad, causing them to see illusions and scream, the Onyro can teleport through televisions and fade in and out of sight, while the Deathslinger can fire harpoons and reel his victims in.
Finding and bringing down the survivors involves a lot of mind games. You’re faster than them and have special powers that can be used, but they are nimble, and there are four of them. If you focus too hard on chasing a single survivor, the others will repair the generators.
Sometimes it’s knowing when to break a pallet or when to go around, other times it’s looking in another direction, knowing that they can see where your gaze is, to trick them into thinking you don’t know where they are right before you turn to strike them. It’s knowing when to chase, and when to back off, which generators to protect, and what hooks to use.
Sometimes, downing a survivor and coming back for them later is a better strategy than hooking them immediately. At the same time, camping them is a bad idea. If they are on a hook, your presence can grant them the strength to unhook themselves, and if you’re camping a survivor, the others are free to repair the generators.
The killer has an ample amount of tools and mechanics that make the hunt really satisfying and strategic. You feel powerful, but not unbeatable. That fact forces you to use some brains alongside your brawn. You’re definitely the cat, but the mice can be crafty, and there is this excellent tug of war pushing and pulling both sides the entire match.
Degrees of Success & Failure
This here is the big thing that really makes Dead by Daylight work. Succeeding and failing as either side isn’t binary. On the extreme side of the spectrum, all four survivors escaping or all four survivors dying is the height of winning or losing. However, it’s much more granular than that.
Perhaps two survivors escape and two die, perhaps only one dies, or maybe all four escape, but the killer earned a whole bunch of points during the match. Victory and failure aren’t quite so clear thanks to the excellent scoring system.
No matter which side you play, you are graded based on how well you perform various gameplay factors, and every action earns you points. These points are converted into blood points, which are used to advance characters, but more on that later.
For example, as the Killer, you are graded on your ability to apply pressure, win chases, interrupt survivors, and, of course hooking them. You also earn points for simply finding them, or even breaking pallets and damaging generators. It’s entirely possible to “lose” and still score very well by being a good killer.
On the survivor side, this system is even more important because it tricks the players into working together, and it works better than any system I’ve seen.
As a survivor, you get points for repairing, evading, healing, and rescuing other players and a variety of other actions. This causes the survivors to act altruistically, not just for the sake of it, or because it increases their chances of winning, but because they are rewarded directly for doing so.
Furthermore, since people just help each other by default and are rewarded for more than simply winning, it has fostered an interesting behaviour pattern I’ve noticed in the community. Once the gates are open, people are free to leave and escape, but it’s rare for a team to actually leave anyone behind if there is a chance that person could still escape.
On the killer side, I’ve seen multiple times where the killer has let the final person escape. Why? Maybe they put up a good fight, maybe the killer thought they were new? It doesn’t matter. The point is that the killer has room to do that in the first place because of how fluid the scoring is.
To give you another example of just how clean this is implemented. One of the badges you’re graded on as a survivor is called Lightbringer. Points for it are primarily earned through repairing generators. However, if a killer is chasing someone, that person gets Lightbringer points for any generator progress their teammates manage to make while they keep the killer distracted during the chase.
So while you aren’t the one repairing the generator, if progress is being made because you are keeping the killer occupied, the game rewards you for it. It’s brilliant and really helps incentivize leaning into the game’s mechanics. The system gets people in Dead by Daylight to work together organically, without forcing voice chat, and I’m incredibly impressed. Oftentimes, games use psychology for nefarious intent. It’s nice to see a game use it to reinforce teamwork.
Roster & Perks
Dead by Daylight is a live service game that has been trucking for 9 years, which means there is a lot of purchasable content for it. This was almost a pain point for me since I’m the type of person who isn’t happy unless I have everything. However, in Dead By Daylight’s case, I might want everything, but I don’t feel like I need it right away. I’m happy to grab new killers and survivors over time rather than all at once, and there are a few reasons for that.
On the killer side, it’s the need to learn how to play each one while earning enough blood points to advance them. If I bought a bunch of killers, they would sit there for weeks before I could play them, so that means I have far less FOMO. I picked up a few that I was really eager to play, and alongside the base ones, I’m set for a while.
On the survivor side, each character is essentially a skin. You see, both killers and survivors have perks, and once you advance them past level 50, those perks can be transferred to other characters to form unique builds. The killers have unique powers that can’t be transferred, however, survivors don’t. This means that once you advance a survivor far enough, they essentially become a cosmetic, as you can use their perks elsewhere.
I grabbed a couple of survivors who had perks that fit my favorite playstyles, and I’m content to slowly grab more when I feel the need to change things up. There’s no benefit to me owning all the survivors right away, I wouldn’t have the blood points to advance them all.
Furthermore, quite a few killers and survivors can be purchased with a currency you can earn in the game. Skins are also available, and I won’t defend those because they are, of course, absurdly priced.
Blood Points are a bit of a double-edged sword. It is indeed a grind to earn them, and they are used to advance characters through a procedural tree of perks and items. At the same time, if they were too plentiful, it would undercut that grading system I praised earlier, and the fact that I’m not swimming in them is what calms down my FOMO about not having the entire roster at once.
I do appreciate the fluid nature of the perk system, though. By advancing characters far enough, you have access to a ton of builds. This comes at a price, however, as some perks are straight garbage, and when a powerful one you need is on a character you need to buy, it can feel a little pay-to-win.
In practice, however, I’ve never seen a perk be a game-changing universal must-have. Most of them really reinforce certain playstyles or have situational usages. Furthermore, a ton of really good perks are available on characters that come with the base game.
Live service has its ups and downs, but without it, Dead by Daylight wouldn’t be around today for me to talk about in the first place. A 9-year-old game needs funding, just know that with the good, there is some bad.
Verdict
Dead by Daylight really surprised me. Asymmetrical gameplay is really hard to pull off, and I won’t sit here and pretend it’s perfectly balanced, it’s not. I’m 90% sure that a coordinated team of friends with voice communication would smoke most killers.
However, that’s not the most common way you are going to interact with the game. It’s going to be one killer and four random survivors of various skill levels with no voice communication who are working together because the game rewards them for it. In that situation, the game really shines and feels balanced. It’s rare that playing with randoms is the optimal experience in a game, yet Dead by Daylight really managed to nail it.
The end result is that Dead by Daylight is an incredibly graceful and strategic game of cat and mouse that is largely best played with randoms. The scoring system has degrees of success and failure and greatly incentivizes killers to play their roles and survivors to work together. I can see why it’s still going strong after 9 years. It certainly has a few live service hang-ups, but Dead by Daylight is definitely a game worth playing anyway and one of the best asymmetrical multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had.
I’m giving it my Golden Shield Award.
