Picture the scene: we're at an imposing steel mill, in the dead of night. It's foggy. Everything is in black and white. That last part, admittedly, is because I'm playing a big, slobbering rottweiler called Merlin. Credit where credit is due: it's a disarming opening gambit from Supermassive Games, the developer behind Dead By Daylight spin-off The Casting of Frank Stone. But even with four paws and a wagging tail, I can tell something is wrong here. There's a baby crying somewhere in the dingy mill, and when Merlin sniffs at a discarded newspaper – headlined "hunt for missing infant continues" – my gut sinks.
Luckily, none of this is really Merlin's problem. After a four-legged tour of Cedar Street Corp's mill, my perspective switches over to Officer Sam Green for the rest of the demo. The goal is to find said missing infant, and we begin by chatting with security guard (and Merlin's owner) Tom. Supermassive's past narrative-heavy horrors – namely The Quarry and Until Dawn – come into play here, as at several points in the conversation I'm asked to shape Sam's line of questioning. When he spots a flask on Tom's desk, I can either ask if he's been drinking on the job, or overlook it to see if he's noticed anything odd here. I choose to build rapport with the security guard, then head out to investigate the mill myself.
Milling around
Playing Sam, I should feel safe. He's got a revolver strapped to his hip, and presumably has more experience in life-or-death situations than most of the idiotic teenagers Supermassive feeds through the meat grinder. But with no way of drawing that gun – I can only walk, run, climb over things and pick evidence up – I feel very vulnerable in the mill, where giant industrial buildings and thick fog make me acutely aware of how small I am. While prodding around a rusted workshop, I particularly enjoy the way you interact with scenery – to open a filing cabinet I've got to hold down one trigger to grab it while drawing back an analog stick, which prevents me from covering my eyes when I think a jump scare is imminent. It's a neat trick which I imagine will keep players locked into watching genuinely scary moments, but this time around it only leads to a charred clipboard with some information on one of the mill's workers. Pieces of evidence, along with decisions made in cutscenes, are all stored away in menus – they'll presumably be part of a far larger sprawling web in the full game, but for now, all I can gather is that someone at the mill is Not Quite Right.
A little further in, I'm reunited with Tom, who comes in to check on me (I knew being nice would pay off) and look for Merlin. Unfortunately, we find his furry friend chowing down on a nondescript mush of human remains, from which Sam fishes out a severed ear. All signs point to the mill's furnace being in use – I get in by finding a crowbar to lever open a grate, but before going in alone, Sam asks Tom to take the ear back to the town sheriff. He's understandably reluctant, and how you respond to that feels like the game's first big decision. I'm supportive and encourage him to help, which causes a message – "Fate changed: you put your faith in Tom" – to flare ominously on the screen.
From here on out, The Casting Of Frank Stone's preview leans a lot heavier on cutscenes with quick-time events and big decisions. Some of these seem small – I'm asked to choose whether to approach the furnace, from which I can hear a baby crying, via a ramp or ladder – but some feel larger. When titular bad boy Frank Stone appears, a shattered welding mask covering all but his crooked jaw, it takes a series of quick-time events to survive the ensuing brawl. Sam is impaled on a jutting wall pipe in the process, but just as Frank moves toward the crib positioned dangerously above the molten furnace pit, he frees himself ("Fate changed - you freed yourself from the pipe") and shoots Frank in the head. I do wonder if these more quick-time-intensive moments will get a little repetitive over the course of a full game, but the reward for persevering is some deliciously gross gore. As his body falls into the furnace, Frank's jaw is impaled on the tip of some metal slag and torn off, while the rest of his body sinks further down on the spike. Lovely.
Though this is where our preview ends, I like what I've seen – not someone's jaw jutting out of a spike, to be clear, but the marriage of Supermassive's choice-driven storytelling and Dead By Daylight's overarching universe. I don't know how The Casting Of Frank Stone is going to feed into the latter game's story, but the demo is steeped in its lore. There's a nod to someone investigating the ever-spooky Entity, a discarded Hillbilly doll is tucked beneath the furnace, and the whole demo feels like Stone's Killer origin story. As someone who's spent more time reading about Dead By Daylight than actually playing it, I suspect The Casting of Frank Stone's narrative appeal will prove irresistible for any lorehounds (hi, Merlin) when it launches on September 3.
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