Dead by Daylight launched in 2016 with a cast of original killers and survivors inspired by the horror archetypes of the 80s golden age of slasher cinema. As the game quickly grew in popularity, developer Behaviour kick-started an ambitious plan to see if they could bring together horror’s most iconic villains under its umbrella, almost like what Fortnite did for pop culture, but specifically for horror.
We spoke to the creative minds behind Dead by Daylight to understand the challenges and journey it took for some of the most iconic crossovers in the game, from Ghost Face to Alien’s Xenomorph, check below to see how some of your favorite horror icons made it into Dead by Daylight.
In the Beginning
Behaviour didn’t begin Dead by Daylight with a cast of recognizable faces. Before Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, the studio launched the multiplayer survival horror game with four original killers and five survivors that were created in-house but designed to evoke the style of the iconic 80s horror golden age. “The first originals, these guys up there, were really inspired by obviously the classics of the horror world, the slasher movies of the ’70s and the ’80s. So for us it was always part of the DNA of what we were building,” says Behaviour’s head of partnerships Matthieu Cote.
The meticulous designs of Dead by Daylight’s original characters spoke to the admiration the developers had for the evil movie creatures of that era. Importantly, they were a hit with those playing the game, and the developers were flooded with fan art and fan fiction all based on these original characters, created by loyal fans hooked on the lore created by Behaviour. But as Dead by Daylight’s popularity began to grow, Behaviour was finally in a position to take a stab at a very special collaboration it had been eyeing for a long time. Or as Cote says, “We were able to leverage some of the longstanding relationships we have with a lot of licensers out there and secure the rights to Halloween, the very original Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, and that was the first foray into that licensing world that we did in DBD.”
Getting Michael Myers was a huge coup. Both Behaviour and the fans loved the collaboration and crucially it opened the door for even more crossovers.
How Do You Follow Freddy Krueger and Leatherface?
While it began with Michael Meyers, Behaviour wasn’t content to stop there. The studio branched out quickly, scooping all of the big 80s horror franchises like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Nightmare on Elm Street. But with the pantheon of classics complete, Behaviour looked towards the modern hits next.
One of the earliest collaborations was between Behaviour Interactive and Lionsgate for the film series Saw, though maybe not the character you might expect. Instead of adding Jigsaw aka John Kramer, Behaviour chose Amanda Young, John Kramer’s apprentice from the Saw films, or ‘The Pig’ as she’s known in Dead by Daylight. “I think the obvious answer for most people was Jigsaw, right? And he should have been the killer. And we didn’t think so,” says Behaviour’s senior creative director Dave Richard.
The reasoning was that Jigsaw wants to “test people” which is too noble a goal for a Dead by Daylight killer. However as Cote says, “Amanda cheats. Amanda wants people to suffer and wants people to die and doesn’t play the game fair, which made her a great prospect, a great candidate to be a killer, because she’s bad, she’s a really bad person.”
“Plus, it was a nice little way to surprise people by bringing an interesting character that is very core to the Saw, but that fit better within our universe.”
Behaviour didn’t want to just add a famous character for the sake of it, but wanted to incorporate a horror franchise in a way that made sense for both Dead by Daylight and Saw. Amanda was the more natural fit as her film counterpart was a true sadist compared to John Kramer’s more philosophical teacher. Plus, choosing Amanda meant that as part of Amanda’s kit, she’s able to put survivors in the trap that she herself survived— the Reverse Bear Trap.
“Yeah, it’s the most iconic trap, I think, people will think about when thinking about Saw,” says Richard. “There’s a lot of great other traps, but they’re not as practical as the Reverse Bear Trap too. Being able to move around with this on your head, and having the pressure to go play that game and to get out was a perfect fit for our rules as well in the game.”
Scream If You Want to Die Faster
The Saw collaboration proved that Behaviour was capable of rewriting the horror canon to its will, subverting expectations by focusing on Amanda Young rather than John Kramer and taking the reins of a franchise with the blessings of the license holder. However, integrating other characters wasn’t always that simple. The rights to some horror franchises are tied up in all kinds of limbo.
Take Scream, for example. Ghost Face’s iconic look is actually owned by the original toy company that created the mask, Fun World, rather than the movie studio behind the films. And so, to get the iconic visage, Behaviour reached out directly to Fun World and got the rights to Ghost Face from them. But because they didn’t have rights to any of the movies, Behaviour had the fun task of creating an original killer to hide behind the mask. This actually worked in the developer’s favor because Ghost Face’s identity changes each time in the films. As such, Behaviour was able to give its own spin on creating a new killer, a freelance journalist named Danny Johnson. “It was a perfect fit for us. The costume is more important than the person underneath. So it was a great opportunity for us to create that original character.,” says Richard.
What Behaviour did try to convey from th emovies is the sense of humor which in the game appears in the descriptions for his ability add-ons, whether it’s his camera ‘Philly,’ or an add-on called ‘Cheap Cologne’ that makes his presence known to survivors, while at the same time ‘marking’ them. Furthermore, Ghost Face is able to ‘lean’ around corners, which makes any encounters with him terrifying, if a little ridiculous.
From The Silver Screen to Silent Hill
While Behaviour featured guest characters from another video game in 2017, when Left 4 Dead’s Bill made it into Dead by Daylight, 2020’s Silent Hill chapter was a full-blown collaboration that brought the killer Pyramid Head and survivor Cheryl Mason to the game. But Silent Hill being what it is, the collaboration wouldn’t have been complete without incorporating the iconic location of the title, which Behaviour incorporated into the DLC as a special map. “It was non-negotiable,” says Cote on adding a Silent Hill map as part of the DLC. “We would not have done Silent Hill without Silent Hill, right?”
“it’s Silent Hill. It’s a place, the place is very important,” adds Richard. “So having the map in there was, like you say… non-negotiable.”
Over the years, Silent Hill has had many different incarnations. In the earliest games, Silent Hill’s otherworld was something that just happened – you’d be in a normal version of the town one moment, step through a door, and come out the other side into the nightmare realm. In later games, Silent Hill changed in real-time, an effect that was borrowed for the live-action film adaptations. Behaviour’s take involved a Silent Hill that was both normal and nightmarish at the same time.
“I think that in the early days of the level design of this map, we wanted to go through a narrative so that the level would actually change, and so that there’s some actions that you’d be able to do that would change the level to the dark world and maybe back,” Richard explains. “That sadly was just out of scope, something that we couldn’t do at a time. So the best other thing that we could do is to make these two worlds live side-by-side. We’ve also implemented that secret gameplay that you can discover, make the clock bell ring and discover the secret. And that was also another way to show a bit of transformation or to wink at the original transformation that we see Silent Hill.”
For Silent Hill, the location was just as important as the characters Behaviour set to incorporate into Dead by Daylight. But for the studio’s other video game collaboration, the challenge was focused entirely on the character itself.
Face Your Nemesis
Nemesis is just one of the deadly foes players encounter in Resident Evil. Rather than just pick-and-choose, Behaviour decided to arm Nemesis with all of the dangers present in Capcom’s survival horror series, giving him the ability to summon zombies or infect players with the G-Virus. The ultimate goal was to get all the details right, with Behaviour conferring with Capcom to get even the tiniest attribute correct.
“It was constant conversations, I remember, with the licenser and the people on the production team over [at Capcom], and there’s a lot of things that are really of critical importance for them,” says Cote on collaborating with Resident Evil. “Whether it’s the exact color of the virus elements or just the way the character is represented and the impact that it has.”
Richard says that the goal with Nemesis was to capture the whole package of the character and series. Hence the zombies and virus in Nemesis’ arsenal. However, one thing Nemesis is missing in Dead by Daylight is its iconic rocket launcher. Richard says the rocket launcher was indeed discussed internally, but ultimately Behaviour had to be true to Dead by Daylight first and artillery just did not work with the game it created.
Thinking Outside the Ring
Once Behaviour finished on Silent Hill, it returned its focus to movies and, with franchises like Halloween and Saw already under its belt, the developer looked abroad for its next collaboration – J-Horror icon Sadako from The Ring. And according to Cote, Dead by Daylight is very big in Japan.
“The content creators really enjoyed [Dead by Daylight],” Cote revealed. “So when we reached out to the license holders over there, they knew the game, they knew what sort of thing we were trying to build and they were already eager to get involved.”
While getting the rights to use Sadako in Dead by Daylight wasn’t an issue, there was still the challenge of bringing the unique lore of The Ring to the game. In particular it was her modus operandi: killing her victims seven days after they watch her cursed video tape.
Even though Sadako was made to zip through TV sets just like in the movies, players can’t very well sit around for seven days to wait for her curse to kick in, so Behaviour spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make her week-long curse work. “We went through several prototypes and different ideas that we’ve played with. So ranging from a match will end in seven minutes or we give a short amount of time, or… we give notches that will go and increment for your curse and we will replicate that with using the number seven,” Richard tells IGN.
Ultimately, seven becomes a recurring stat for Sadako where her powers affect Survivors, whether they’re seven meters away, or their presence becomes known to her for seven seconds. If you look at the character’s unofficial wiki page, you’ll find that many of her abilities revolve around the number seven, which was a fun way to incorporate the seven days concept into all her abilities.
Behaviour also wanted to add a new survivor to go along with Sadako, but this led to yet another puzzle. The only survivor from the movies was a child named Yoichi Asakawa. Unsurprisingly, Behaviour refused to add a child survivor to the game. “ The only person that survives canonically in the story is this little child. And obviously we don’t want to have children survivors in Dead by Daylight. We don’t want to put kids on a meat hook,” Cote says flatly.
The solution? Age up Yoichi into an adult, something Kadokawa then approved as part of The Ring’s official canon. “We worked together to create a version of that character that’s all grown up and the story that was told around the character, how he became a marine biologist and all of the things around him we developed with the people at Kadokawa and making sure that this became canon to their universe,” Cote revealed.
In Space No One Can Hear You Scream
Dead by Daylight’s most recent collaboration is a culmination of all that has come before. As killers grew in size and scope, Behaviour was forced to develop new abilities, character models, and maps, and all of these advancements can be seen with the Xenomorph.
Indeed, the Xenomorph incorporates many of the advancements Behaviour developed on past collaborations, like changing up how levels work as it does with characters like Sadako and Pyramid Head, and incorporating larger and more ambitious killers like Nemesis. But with the Xenomorph, it was the first time they’d created a four-legged killer.
“For the first time ever, we were going to have a character that could be on two legs or four legs at any time,” Richard tells IGN proudly. But another big addition to the Xenomorph’s abilities was the addition of a game-changing feature: Tunnels.
Indeed, one of the biggest technical marvels with the Xenomorph is how it can travel through unique tunnels, which have been added to all 36 maps. The tunneling ability was a way for Behaviour to channel one of the Xenomorph’s primary characteristics — in this case wall-crawling — in the world of Dead by Daylight. “Very early in the production of The Alien, we had this idea — looking at the movie — looking at the character — that we would be able to climb along any surface,” Richard says. “And that would create a pretty cool power, being able to go on walls, go on ceilings, surprise the survivor, but it was absolutely a nightmare to support, so we had to find another idea that would replicate this fantasy. And the tunnels, I think, is doing a great job to do exactly that.”
He adds that building entire tunnel systems and supporting the feature across all of Dead by Daylight’s maps was extremely challenging, “but absolutely worth it.”
“What’s really cool about the tunnel system is that it is there for real, right? You’re using it in real time, you move around, and you actually can see as well what’s happening above. It gives you really that sense of, again, being this character, being a predator and being on the hunt,” Richard exclaims.
The Xenomorph marks how far Behaviour has come with Dead by Daylight since its launch over seven years, advancing the tech to the point where it can now incorporate almost anything it wants in an authentic way. And even though the Xenomorph was top of Behaviour’s hit list and took years to get it right, there’s still a lot more to come.
Although the developer refuses to give specifics, horror has enjoyed tremendous success since Dead by Daylight was first released and serves as new inspiration constantly for the next collaboration. ““The list is… It keeps growing also because there are… I mean, it’s been almost 10 years now that the game is up, so there have been some really interesting new properties that have been created in that timeframe,” Cote explains.
Chucky from Child’s Play was just recently announced, and Stranger Things is returning for another round. Could we see Pennywise making into the game, or maybe the sightless aliens from A Quiet Place? Only time will tell, but if you’re into horror there’s really only one place you’d need look.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.