I thought the scariest thing about Dead Take would be its Final Fantasy and Baldur's Gate 3 stars doing American accents, but no horror game has stunned me like this since 2022

The moment I pick up the UV torch in Dead Take, my stomach drops like a stone. This glamorous Hollywood mansion has enough dark secrets lurking behind its sleek mahogany walls to fill a number of horror flicks, most of which I've uncovered by this late stage in the game. One glance at the stark purple beam, though, and I know the most horrifying ones are yet to come.

Boasting career-defining performances from a stellar cast plucked from gaming's elite ranks, I had no doubt that Dead Take would deliver the FMV-style horror-mystery thriller I'd been craving. But what I didn't expect was a near Frankensteinian cautionary tale where the tormented becomes the tormentor. Dead Take is a damning indictment of the trauma and abuse so often engendered by entertainment industries, with performers and producers alike becoming complicit in their own undoing. The parameters might have shifted over the years, but Dead Take posits that these evils never truly go away. Rather, much like Halloween's Michael Myers, they simply take on a new shape.

"Seven roses, two glasses, one night..."

Format-wise, Dead Take is a first-person point-and-click horror walking sim with puzzles aplenty, numerous locked doors, and a twisted narrative that unfolds over the course of its five to 10-hour runtime. But the way this narrative is drip-fed to the player is what I'm most interested in, as well as the fact that so much of it is left to interpretation.

Put in the shoes of Chase Lowry (portrayed by Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon in live action), I'm tasked with breaking into famous director Duke Cain's Hollywood mansion to find my friend and fellow actor, Vinny Monroe (Final Fantasy 16 breakout Ben Starr, aka Verso from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 most recently). He's been curiously unreachable since attending a party here last night, and in order to piece together what happened, I'll have to scour the place.

My first hurdle is to find my way inside this so-called impenetrable fortress, a feat easily performed after having a nose in the security office. Much like indie roguelike hit Blue Prince, having a pen and paper handy is incredibly useful while playing Dead Take. Any collection of numbers could be useful, from dates etched on the backs of paintings to street address fragments. This habit serves me well as I continue my investigation, but when I start collecting flash drives and video clips, things really pick up.

After fixing the projector in Duke's home cinema, I'm introduced to the SplAIce software programme – a very direct comment on the impact of AI technology on creative industries. Using this, I'm able to take disparate clips found on hidden flash drives across the mansion and splice them together to create new ones, providing some much needed context for all the clues and storylines I'm uncovering.

But that's the thing: by manipulating this footage in hopes of gleaning truth from it, the line separating fact from fiction gets progressively blurry. Every character becomes an unreliable narrator in their own story, and everything I draw from this footage – spliced or otherwise – is allusory at best.

From infanticide to sex cults, power play, conspiracies, and cover-ups, everything in Dead Take is a possibility. The truth is a coiled, confused thing, hiding in plain sight yet completely camouflaged. The fact that nothing is ever confirmed only feeds into the creeping sense of dread that Dead Take creates so effectively. It's all down to interpretation, because the truth, just like the footage I'm playing with, has been manipulated to the point of unrecognition.

"What part is me?"

Another central theme in Dead Take is the commodification of talent itself. "Feed me something real," Duke growls to Chase – or was it Vinny? Or was it both? – in a voice note as he implores his actors to dig deep and be vulnerable. Duke is starving for fresh talent, fresh blood to put before the gnawing pit of his camera lens, but it seems every actor who's obliged has done so for a price.

Again, this is only alluded to. But between one actress's spiral into drug addiction, suggestions of blackmail, extortion, and sexual favors in exchange for stardom, Dead Take shines a spotlight on the ugliest sides of Hollywood while making no promises that any of it is actually happening before you.

The primary source of horror in this game (aside from admittedly cheap Alan Wake 2-style jumpscares) is what your mind comes up with when it processes all these clues. Crime of passion, or cold-blooded murder? Grieving father, or perverted predator? Does splicing clips together help you gain a new perspective, or does it just confuse you more?

The live action segments might not be much more involved than editing and watching them, but they're absolutely pivotal to Dead Take. They don't feel shoehorned in at all, which is something I look out for when approaching any mixed media game. Rather, these instances are cleverly placed at opportune moments, answering questions by posing even more of them, and I don't think the game would have had nearly as much impact without them.

The fact that Surgent Studios has so many familiar faces and voices in the mix adds another layer to Dead Take's disarming ambitions.

Seeing our industry darling Ben Starr effortlessly pull off the role of an aggressive, misogynistic Hollywood heartthrob is as uncomfortable as it is a testament to his own acting chops. I'm equally floored watching Neil Newbon deliver an incredibly powerful performance as a fame-starved actor, desperate and "hungry" for his big break. Matthew Mercer's surprise reveal in the game's final moments sent my mind reeling, and Sam Lake's one and only monologue might be the most haunting, important speech in Dead Take. Not every video game personality is as recognizable as their voice, and Surgent knew what it was doing when it decided to weaponize both against the player's expectations.

Even as a hyperbolic depiction of Hollywood at its most harrowing, Dead Take had me questioning reality every step of the way. I can easily forgive the odd UI fumble – it took me about an hour of searching to find a USB that was dangling in front of my face the whole time, literally – because it's just that clever about its delivery.

I've seen some Steam reviews bemoaning its relatively short length, with some players zipping through it within five hours, but I'm glad I took my time to examine each and every centimeter of Duke Cain's mansion. Dead Take is one of the most surprising new horror games I've played since The Mortuary Assistant's own brand of psychological warfare, and I'm still thinking about it four days later.

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