The Casting of Frank Stone

I have been a fan of both the Dead by Daylight game and Supermassive's series of filmic games for years, so when I heard that the two of them were collaborating on a project I thought it was a match made in heaven. Dead by Daylight has a lot of lore to it's series, but most of it is confined to the Tome section in-game, so a crossover game to expand the lore seemed like the best idea. After playing through The Casting of Frank Stone, I found that this was more than a good idea. It was an amazing idea. This was a match made in heaven that will please both fans of Dead by Daylight and even non-fans who love Supermassive's narrative based games. 

The Casting of Frank Stone starts in 1963. A police officer known as Sam Green investigates the local steel mill in hopes of finding a missing infant child. He searches through the mill and starts finding human remains. Going deeper into the depths of the mill, he comes across the main antagonist of the series, Frank Stone. Sam seemingly manages to defeat Stone but obviously it won't be that easy as there is something more sinister at play here. From this point forward the game jumps between two separate time periods, 1980 and 2024.

In 2024, a character named Maddy is haunted by nightmares after the death of her mother, and travels to a remote mansion in the woods. There she also meets two other characters, Stan and Linda. The owner of the mansion is a woman named Augustine who has promised them all something they want in return for them offering up their piece of a film reel from a movie called "Murder Mill". Jumping back to the 1980's we meet a group of friends in the aforementioned steel mill shooting said movie, Murder Mill. Here we are introduced to Chris, Jaime and a much younger version of the Linda we met in 2024. Despite constant warnings to stay away, the teenagers in 1980 decide to sneak into the Mill to finish their movie. As you would expect, all hell breaks loose soon after. It's a great set up, and immediately has you asking questions since we see Linda in both 1980 and 2024 but some things aren't quite lining up. These are the kinds of hooks I really like in stories that have you constantly asking questions and coming up with your own theories as to what is going on. The game does a good job of slowly trickling out info that fills in the gaps and fleshes out the story. 

Like all Supermassive games, most of the gameplay here involves walking around each location and investigating the environment which will usually start a cutscene to move the story along. But this can also initiate dialogue options with other characters, and the choices you make here can either change the relationship that you have with that character and in some cases can also lead to further consequences down the line. There are plenty of items to collect and lore items like books and other things you can pick up and examine which is give you details on the mystery surrounding Frank Castle.

There is some light puzzle solving involved and usually revolves around finding keys to open doors, completing slide puzzles or finding key items which will fit into other objects and unlock additional keys or will open rooms. Then you have major choices you have to make where you are presented with one of two options such as choosing to flee or fight an enemy. These choices can and usually will result in immediate death if you choose unwisely. I think that's one of the best parts of these kinds of games; on your first playthrough you really have no idea which decision is going to lead to you or others being able to escape with their lives. Sometimes options you think are the obvious ones to escape will lead to death. 

A question when it comes to a licensed game like this will be "Do you need to have played Dead by Daylight to understand or play this game?" As a huge Dead by Daylight fan I absolutely adored this game and this is what I would call a developer "understanding the assignment". This is NOT a situation where Supermassive was working on a game, got the DBD license then slapped a bunch of references in the game like the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV screen meme and called it a day. This is a true Dead by Daylight story and one of the best ways I have ever seen an IP branch out with spinoffs as a way to expand the lore and the world of the game - especially with the ending of the game that I won't spoil for obvious reasons. Let's just say that as a Dead by Daylight fan, when I saw the ending I legit screamed in excitement. I was giddy, I was shaking in excitement, it was a "holy ****" moment and when those credits started rolling I had the biggest smile across my face you could imagine.

This is how you adapt a property to another form of entertainment and it was done in the best way imaginable, to the point where I hope Supermassive and Behavior continue their relationship and we get more of these games in the future. However, if you aren't a Dead by Daylight fan you can absolutely still enjoy the game as it is a solid Supermassive game in it's own right. There may be a lot of moments here that probably won't hit as hard for non-fans, especially the significance of the ending, but you got a solid narrative-based choose your own adventure for horror fans, with some of the absolutely gnarly death scenes the series is known for. One of Madison's potential deaths, which can happen in a specific room about halfway through the game is one of the best death scenes I have ever seen in a Supermassive game.  

In terms of length, compared to other Supermassive games, The Casting of Frank Stone is very short. My first playthrough only took me around five - six hours and that was with exploring and looking for collectibles. My second playthrough was significantly shorter since I found almost all of the collectibles in the first playthrough. For those who want to find all the collectibles, completing the game gives you the Plunderer's Instinct ability which lets you send out a pulse in specific areas and will basically tell you where the collectibles are. This is great for those who want to 100% the game and you will actually need to play through the game multiple times to collect everything since some can only be unlocked on certain paths depending on the choices you make and who is alive by the time you get that point in the game.

In terms of the length, personally I didn't mind it's short length at all. I believe games, movies, TV shows etc... should only be as long as they need to in order to tell their stories and The Casting of Frank Stone was the perfect length to tell the story. It also helps the game is short because of the Cutting Room Floor feature, which is unlocked after you finish the game. The Cutting Room Floor basically acts as a flowchart that will show the path you took through the game but will also show you the other paths that were available, along with unlockables that are in the area and a global percentage of what path other players took. You can start your playthrough from a number of points in the game, usually before major choices or deaths can happen and will let you go through and see the other paths that were available. That is another reason I prefer the shorter length of this title, because there are some choices that you can make at the beginning of the game which will only come into play again during the finale, so blowing through this game multiple times to see everything shouldn't take much time. 

I reviewed the game on PS5 and it does have some issues including some framerate drops while walking around the area and I did notice the lip synching was off during certain scenes. It should be noted that a day one patch is planned that should hopefully fix most of these issues. Some of the writing and voice acting is a little rough. These games are known for their B Movie type horror, so this shouldn't come as a surprise, but there are some awkward moments during serious scenes where characters are just kind of standing around while others are giving their dramatic monologues, and yeahhhh...I don't think they would be winning any Oscar awards for those performances. And of course, like most Supermassive games, there is ridiculous love triangle drama between two of the male characters and a female character which goes absolutely nowhere and wasn't necessary at all.

Honestly the biggest complaint I would have with the game is the weird decision to not let you skip the credits until they start playing after a few minutes. Then after you skip the credits there is an unskippable post credits scene and then it plays the main trailer for the game which is again unskippable. I mean the trailer is cool and all, and I love the song they used for it, but I really don't need to see be forced to see it after I just finished the game. Not to mention I wanted to jump right back into the game using the cutting room floor feature but had to wait about 5 minutes between unskippable scenes to do so after finishing the game. This is nitpicky, but something that I hope gets patched in the future. 

All that said, The Casting of Frank Stone was a fantastic experience and one that I enjoyed a lot more that Supermassive's other offerings as of late including The Quarry and some of the Dark Pictures games like The Devil in Me. Being a fan of Dead by Daylight, this game was something that I have wanted for so long and is a way for them to expand the lore and the world of the series in a new way. When that Casting of Frank Stone chapter inevitably is released for Dead by Daylight, it's going to hit so much harder because by playing this game you actually get to see something a lot of fans have wanted to see for a long time. You actually get to see how a person becomes a killer and ends up in the Entity's realm. You get to see the journey of the Survivors and how they get involved in this as well. You get to learn more about the overall world of Dead by Daylight especially with some of the stuff that happens outside the Entity's realm which we only read about in the Tomes. Dead by Daylight fans in for a real treat with this game and while the story of Frank Stone is complete, I hope we see more stories like this from Behavior and Supermassive in the future.