The Casting Of Frank Is Punishing, But That's The Point

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When you’re on the sofa, screaming at a cast of half-drunk, horny teenagers to not run up the stairs or split up as they fall head first into every single slasher trope, you feel hopeless. But in Until Dawn and The Quarry, you can finally show them how it’s done. The Casting of Frank Stone… less so.

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Spoilers for The Casting of Frank Stone.

I only saved one survivor in my original playthrough — Sam Green. In the final chapter, Madi picks up a pendant for good luck that ends up hypnotising her, causing her to be absorbed by Frank Stone: I physically cringed when her face pushed against his flesh from the inside as she screamed for help. Stan wailed against the metal grate separating him from escape, only to get cleaved from behind. And Linda tried to help Sam when fighting Frank Stone, rather than splitting up, only to join the mounting pile of corpses.

Chapter 14 is called The Massacre at Gerant Manor, so it’s fitting that an avalanche of small mistakes over the course of the game culminates in a brutal showdown that leaves almost everyone on the cutting room floor. Fans aren’t happy about seeing so many of their favourites unceremoniously killed off by what they describe as unfair decisions, but that’s the whole point.

During my second playthrough, I looked away for a second and a QTE appeared in the Horologium (think Basileus's Machine from Thirteen Ghosts) which I missed. Cue one of the three enormous spinning rings carving through Stan and killing him in an instant. In that same room, messing up while pulling the lever causes Madi to rapidly age and shrivel into a mummified husk. Death is a constant present in The Casting of Frank Stone, looming behind every failure, no matter how trivial it may seem.

That’s because it’s a Dead by Daylight prequel, setting up the origins of the Entity’s realm and the eternal game of survivor versus killer. Behaviour Interactive’s world is wholly unfair by nature, locking defenceless strangers into a confined space with an unstoppable murderer who is oftentimes a supernatural monster. The only means of survival is escape, so you must run at every opportunity. But even that only delays the inevitable as the next round begins.

Supermassive has perfectly captured that feeling of helplessness in making its own survivors so fragile. Jaime can die especially early on if you try to save his girlfriend rather than abandoning her — the game clearly expects you to make this decision, since nobody likes a coward in a horror movie. But that decision is what kills him, flipping the script on its head by punishing you for doing anything but running.

Everything you think you know about surviving a horror movie, and especially a Supermassive game, will fail you here. While that might feel like a gruelling, unfair punishment, it encapsulates Dead by Daylight brilliantly.

The second it clicks and you stop thinking in terms of how best to save everyone and instead how best to save yourself, death becomes less and less common. You need to be selfish, which is a learning curve at first, but it only makes subsequent replays that much more satisfying as the rulebook becomes clear.

Characters get axed far more frequently than in past Supermassive games, and the instinct might be to completely avoid that and reach the end with as many people alive as possible — it’d be a triumph in any other game. But here, death is a mercy, and by the end, I was glad that only Sam had survived.

Since The Casting of Frank Stone is about the Entity’s realm forming, all who survive are trapped in that eternal game of cat and mouse. It’s a hellish nightmare of torture against some of the most gruesome horror characters in history, but you can avoid sending people here by getting them killed before Augustine’s plan comes to fruition.

Dead by Daylight has some unsettling undertones now, huh?

Sam’s response to seeing the iconic pre-match campfire was one of dejection. He sat down, quietly realising the fate he had sealed. Linda is more nihilistic, the fight ripped out of her as she becomes a hollow shell of her former self, refusing to coddle anyone anymore. And Madi is perhaps the most upsetting of all, as she begs to go home and breaks down, desperate to escape as a glimmer of hope remains. I’d rather avoid the Frank Stone vore, but mummifying her feels like the happier ending by the time the credits roll.

So sure, it’s unfair. But only if you stick rigidly to the horror playbook and try to follow all of the slasher rules — the reality is that The Casting of Frank Stone plays by Dead by Daylight’s code of honour (i.e. there is none), and you have to adapt to that mentality if you want to avoid the worst outcomes. But even then, I’m glad I played by the old rules and got everyone killed because seeing Madi find herself in the Entity’s realm broke my heart.

The Casting of Frank Stone is a fresh look into the wider world of Behaviour Interactive's Dead by Daylight, with a narrative-based horror game developed by Supermassive Games. In the town of Cedar Hills, a group of young friends must contend with the legacy of the murderous title character.

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