INTRODUCTION:

Dead by Daylight released in 2016, and a horror game in which you can play as the Bad Guy was not only fairly novel at the time, but seems like the kind of thing I would jump on right away. But, I guess I was never that big into online multiplayer experiences, not quite as big into "slashers" as I was into wackier critters, and not all that much of a gamer myself to begin with.

So, I didn't ultimately get around to trying this game until just weeks ago, a full three years after they actually DID introduce a Wacky Creature killer that finally piqued my interest. We'll be getting to that one in due time, obviously, but as a totally inexperienced newcomer who's still figuring out how you're supposed to play this game and has zero connection to its fandom, I am taking it upon myself to offer my Expert Professional opinion on every one of the game's original killers.

But first...what do you DO in this game? And why?

  Dead by Daylight pits multiple "survivor" players against one "killer" playerin a randomly chosen location that can vary from everyday suburban landscapes to hellish alien worlds.. Survivors must work together to repair a series of generators that unlock an escape route, while the killer must stalk and wound survivors until they're weak enough to impale on one of the many giant meat hooks littered around the environment. Survivors have multiple ways to delay their pursuer, heal themselves or escape from a hook, especially with help, but can only be hooked two or three times before they "die," which is typically represented by a bunch of gangly insect-like limbs that drag the victim up into the sky.

  This is because the entire situation is actually orchestrated by "THE ENTITY:" a cosmic being that feeds on human emotion but especially craves the rush of terror and hope it can milk out of its sick little game. Manifesting in our world as a mysterious fog, it lures its playthings right into its paradimensional guts, generates a simulated reality from their memories and gorges on all those tasty mind-juices as they struggle to survive...never knowing that the whole ordeal is just going to repeat on an infinite loop, wiping their memories again and again, until their soul is finally reduced to an empty husk.

AND GOOD RIDDANCE!

  Every survivor and killer comes with at least their own short story about who they are and how or why they came to be a part of THE ENTITY'S realm, frequently expanded upon with additional lore drops year after year, but we are of course only focusing on killers here. Some of them are nothing but messed-up humans, some of them used to be humans, and some of them were never human or even technically living things at all, but each one has its own unique set of abilities and perks, each offering a different set of strategies for players to master, each surrounded by endless fan debate and controversy over which ones are fun and well-balanced or broken and cheap and ruined and we are. nnnooooot. Getting into hardly any of that whatsoever. Who cares! I love being an oblivious newbie to these things!

  We're going to start these reviews off with the original set of killer options, then proceed through the remaining original killers in order of how much I personally love them, which may vary according to any combination of their concept, base design, or even optional skins. The many licensed killers, such as Freddy Kreuger, Chucky or the Xenomorph, are not a topic I think I really need to go over for a bogleech.com Halloween, but who knows, maybe I'll find reason to write up something for them!

ENTRY 01: THE TRAPPER (Evan MacMillan)

  Trapper is "the" original Dead by Daylight Killer; the one you're trained on for both the Survivor and Killer tutorial sessions and sort of the "face" of the game's premise at the time of its original release, and he does the job well! He's a grungy, nasty, remorselessly sadistic bastard who wields bear traps as his signature gimmick and wears a creepy white mask with tiny black eye holes and a crooked, gaping "smile" full of needly-sharp teeth. This kind of masked brute is the first thing most people think of when they think "horror movie villain," thanks to both Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre defining the genre so strongly in the public eye that they're constantly referenced (or sincerely mixed up) together into one hockey-masked chainsaw-wielding villain that never really existed.

  So let's say you want to homage this genre for your own original horror media, but you don't want to be a copycat about it. You don't want a lazy stand-in for either of those characters, just to barely dodge a lawsuit, but add to their tradition with your own equivalent offering. All you honestly need to do is make sure your guy revolves around a mask and weapon combo that hasn't really been done before, but is neither too derivative to be boring nor too out-there to scratch the same itch, and I think the Trapper nails this flawlessly. Trapper's mask is creepy in a "generic" enough way to tell you exactly the kind of character you're looking at, but that split lower jaw, like a set of insect mandibles, give it one tiny, easy detail that isn't already associated with any other A-list Masked Maniac in the business.

...And while plenty of horror killers have used bear traps, there aren't that many who revolve around them enough to qualify as their namesake gimmick, which is still a great gimmick to play with if you ask me. I don't care how "basic" the fans think he is. He not only comes armed with several bear traps he can set wherever he wants, but any map he spawns into will be littered with even more of them that he can set, reset, collect and move around as needed. Every time a survivor blunders into one, they're not just damaged and temporarily held in place, but exposed to you as a red silhouette or "aura" from even clear across the map, a coveted play mechanic triggered only by select abilities and effects. Every killer also needs a way to inflict melee damage, however, so the trapper also carries a big gnarly cleaver built from scrap metal!

  Overall, Trapper feels authentically like something a film studio really might have cooked up, at some point between the 1970's and 1990's, to compete with or homage those Big Two and their many other imitations. Whether or not it succeeded, of course, would have come down to the actual quality of everything else in this hypothetical film franchise, but horror villains have a way of finding a devoted fan base no matter how good or bad the surrounding films are. Maybe Trapper would be doomed to the "direct to video" market in record time, maybe he would venture into meta self-parody or intentional schlock or an outer space adventure sooner than any of the top players, but you know he'd have remained just iconic enough to still be getting official licensed Spirit Halloween masks even decades later, if only because his mask is cool, and because bear traps are easily up there with throwing stars, bullwhips, flamethrowers, explosives of all sorts and, of course, dangerous power tools (like chainsaws) as weapons whose sadism is matched 1:1 by their fun factor.

BEST SKIN(S):

"NAUGHTY BEAR:" most alternate skins and costumes in Dead by Daylight hover fairly close to the default character design, but some have more extreme or "visceral" skins that can entail whole new models or alternate characters altogether. This giant teddy bear is actually a cross-reference to one of Behavior Interactive's other games, also called Naughty Bear, in which the teddy bears featured were fully sentient creatures, so this isn't necessarily just Evan wearing a costume. The face is too animated for that to be possible anyway, unless he's got a substantial background in Hollywood-quality animatronics.

"SEASIDE PSYCHO:" few of trappo's more form-fitting skins are more than changes to his clothing, but I do like "seaside psycho," which gives him an actual rotten skull for a mask with seaweed hanging out of the mouth, among other nautical flair.

NAVIGATION: