After playing this game on and off for nearly 6 years and 5500 hours, I can’t help but harbor a love-hate relationship with this game. At its core, Dead by Daylight is a basic title with some comparatively good mileage considering its depth. Every match regardless of maps, characters, or other factors has four survivors repair generators to power doors to escape the match. Oppositely, the killer is tasked with sacrificing the survivors to the entity by throwing them on hooks to deplete their health phases. There’s some auxiliary factors like hatches for alternative escape when you’re the last alive, totems that power killer or survivor perks, or items that boost repair speed or healing efficiency. But really the generator-repairing, teammate-helping, killer-escaping dynamic is what you’ll be interacting with 99% of the time.
This is where fatigue rears its head. This gameplay loop is all there is to the game. No alternate objectives, no different modes, nothing. Doing the main objective sucks. All it entails is finding a generator and then holding left-mouse next to it. Some “skill checks” will occasionally pop up to make sure you’re paying attention but you’ll never miss those unless you’re new or make a misclick on your part. The real fun of the game is in being chased by the killer or making a clutch save. This is where the reward for skill is most felt in the game. Being able to reliably juke, time stuns just right or otherwise express your skill is done beautifully here. There’s not many mechanics to be memorized but those that exist can be honed to the maximum efficiency. And for as little as there is in DBD there’s a surprising depth that can only be understood after dozens of hours playing. Even still, that can only go so far. Playing killer can break up that monotony, but with more pressure to do everything on your own there’s little time to dawdle. And they run into the same problem in the opposite direction of JUST being able to patrol generators and interact with their own power. No sabotage mechanic or side abilities/tools exist.
The roadmap for the game boils down to an endless addition of new killers, survivors, and maps. With all but the killer powers being standardized or cosmetic. Now credit where credit is due. In the design department Behaviour does an A+ job. Whether it be their original characters or licensed chapters they more often than not do great at making a distinct chapter that fits well in the killer fog of DBD. That said, I would much rather they take a temporary or even permanent break from a new chapter and focus on adding to the depth of the gameplay loop. Like I said, getting chased is fun and the heart of the game. Everything else is just down-time until you do get chased though. Repairing generators isn’t a deep, interesting, or tasking experience. Why don’t they switch it up?
Dead by Daylight in the present is a decently popular game that would not be damaged by making more modes to experiment. It’s like they're too afraid of veering off from their simple but archaic gameplay loop in fear of messing something up. An unfounded idea because they have made a few sweet improvements to the game before. The Endgame Collapse mechanic was an awesome addition to the end of matches to prevent wasted time. Heck they don’t even have to make a new mode. Adding new ways to evade the killer besides pallets and windows, or new ways to reliably kill survivors besides hooking them would be a welcome feature. I mean they have a Public Test Build to test features before adding them to the main game, they should really use that more. Dead by Daylight is a fun evening game but I question anyone who can play this unendingly all the time. Once the honeymoon phase wears off it doesn’t have a large amount of endless staying power.
It’s no doubt a fun game to play with friends, but I would advise against taking it too seriously. People will argue until the cows come home about how unbalanced the game is in one direction or another. Most complaints are exaggerated or outright wrong. As a solo player you’ll definitely have a decidedly harder time, but experience and perks can mostly overcome this. It’s perfectly playable solo and rarely will you have an unfair time that’s not caused by external mistakes on the survivors’ part. Sure, some killers on certain maps can make or break the outcome. That’s just the nature of a game with so many different killer powers and map types. Though they could really use some more quality testing on the map design side. As good looking as the maps are, they are not the most well designed ones.
Believe it or not Dead by Daylight IS a game I would recommend. For all its missteps I still think DBD is a pretty good asymmetrical multiplayer game. Far too stagnant, but less obviously so if you know when to put it down and take a break. I’m hopefully optimistic about the future of the franchise with the announcement of more DBD universe games coming out, yet even without that Dead by Daylight is a game that holds on much longer than you think it would.
This is where fatigue rears its head. This gameplay loop is all there is to the game. No alternate objectives, no different modes, nothing. Doing the main objective sucks. All it entails is finding a generator and then holding left-mouse next to it. Some “skill checks” will occasionally pop up to make sure you’re paying attention but you’ll never miss those unless you’re new or make a misclick on your part. The real fun of the game is in being chased by the killer or making a clutch save. This is where the reward for skill is most felt in the game. Being able to reliably juke, time stuns just right or otherwise express your skill is done beautifully here. There’s not many mechanics to be memorized but those that exist can be honed to the maximum efficiency. And for as little as there is in DBD there’s a surprising depth that can only be understood after dozens of hours playing. Even still, that can only go so far. Playing killer can break up that monotony, but with more pressure to do everything on your own there’s little time to dawdle. And they run into the same problem in the opposite direction of JUST being able to patrol generators and interact with their own power. No sabotage mechanic or side abilities/tools exist.
The roadmap for the game boils down to an endless addition of new killers, survivors, and maps. With all but the killer powers being standardized or cosmetic. Now credit where credit is due. In the design department Behaviour does an A+ job. Whether it be their original characters or licensed chapters they more often than not do great at making a distinct chapter that fits well in the killer fog of DBD. That said, I would much rather they take a temporary or even permanent break from a new chapter and focus on adding to the depth of the gameplay loop. Like I said, getting chased is fun and the heart of the game. Everything else is just down-time until you do get chased though. Repairing generators isn’t a deep, interesting, or tasking experience. Why don’t they switch it up?
Dead by Daylight in the present is a decently popular game that would not be damaged by making more modes to experiment. It’s like they're too afraid of veering off from their simple but archaic gameplay loop in fear of messing something up. An unfounded idea because they have made a few sweet improvements to the game before. The Endgame Collapse mechanic was an awesome addition to the end of matches to prevent wasted time. Heck they don’t even have to make a new mode. Adding new ways to evade the killer besides pallets and windows, or new ways to reliably kill survivors besides hooking them would be a welcome feature. I mean they have a Public Test Build to test features before adding them to the main game, they should really use that more. Dead by Daylight is a fun evening game but I question anyone who can play this unendingly all the time. Once the honeymoon phase wears off it doesn’t have a large amount of endless staying power.
It’s no doubt a fun game to play with friends, but I would advise against taking it too seriously. People will argue until the cows come home about how unbalanced the game is in one direction or another. Most complaints are exaggerated or outright wrong. As a solo player you’ll definitely have a decidedly harder time, but experience and perks can mostly overcome this. It’s perfectly playable solo and rarely will you have an unfair time that’s not caused by external mistakes on the survivors’ part. Sure, some killers on certain maps can make or break the outcome. That’s just the nature of a game with so many different killer powers and map types. Though they could really use some more quality testing on the map design side. As good looking as the maps are, they are not the most well designed ones.
Believe it or not Dead by Daylight IS a game I would recommend. For all its missteps I still think DBD is a pretty good asymmetrical multiplayer game. Far too stagnant, but less obviously so if you know when to put it down and take a break. I’m hopefully optimistic about the future of the franchise with the announcement of more DBD universe games coming out, yet even without that Dead by Daylight is a game that holds on much longer than you think it would.