Supermassive Games built a house with sliding walls and called it a game. The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me sends five documentary filmmakers to a replica of H. H. Holmes’s “Murder Castle” on an island in Lake Michigan, then spends eight hours asking which of them you are willing to let die. The answer, by the end, is usually all of them, and the game is honest enough to let that happen.
Trailer, via BANDAI NAMCO Europe.
A Replica on an Island in Lake Michigan
The premise is borrowed and the game knows it. Holmes was a real American serial killer who ran the World’s Fair Hotel in Chicago, a building put up between 1887 and 1892 and sold to the public as a “Murder Castle” rigged with traps for guests. After his capture he confessed to a pile of murders and said he “was born with the devil in me.” Supermassive takes the myth and moves it forward, dropping a modern film crew into a copy of the building where a masked killer has recreated the fixtures.
The prologue runs the original story. Newlyweds Jeff and Marie Whitman check into the hotel during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair for their honeymoon. Holmes splits them up, traps them in rooms that move, and kills them both. It is short, ugly and effective, and it sets the rule the rest of the game follows: the house does the work, the people just walk into it.
Kate Wilder, Charlie Lonnit, and a Crew That Doesn’t Like Each Other
Five playable protagonists carry the story. Kate Wilder (Jessie Buckley) is the investigative journalist and presenter. Charlie Lonnit (Paul Kaye) directs the show and owns Lonnit Entertainment. Mark Nestor (Fehinti Balogun) is the cameraman and Kate’s ex-boyfriend. Jamie Tiergan (Gloria Obianyo) is the grip. Erin Keenan (Nikki Patel) is the audio intern.
The Devil in Me tracks three relationships through the run. Kate and Mark are still raw after a breakup and can either sharpen the tension or start again. Charlie is quitting nicotine, which makes him short with everyone, and Kate in particular thinks his direction is wrecking her career. Jamie and Erin are circling each other, and dialogue choices can turn that into a full romance.
None of this is subtle. Charlie’s withdrawal is played as a running joke that stops being funny when the crew is being hunted, and the Kate-Mark material is the thinnest of the three. But the game gives the crew enough friction that losing one of them costs something, which is more than most horror games manage.
Running, Jumping, and a Multimeter
Here is where The Devil in Me separates itself from the three Dark Pictures games before it. Earlier entries kept players on a strict line. This one opens the map. Characters run, jump, mantle over obstacles, squeeze through tight spaces and balance across beams. The hotel rearranges itself, with the killer sliding walls to scramble your sense of the floor plan.
Each protagonist carries a tool. Charlie’s business card opens locked drawers. Mark’s camera documents evidence. Jamie rewires electrical panels with a multimeter. The puzzles that use them are simple, and the inventory system is thin, but the tools give the five some separation beyond who is standing where.
Action runs on quick time events. Timed button presses dodge attacks, clear hazards, and hold stealth in hiding spots. Miss one and a character can die permanently, and the story keeps going without them. Dialogue and action choices come with a clock on them, and they shift both relationships and the shape of the plot. A menu called Bearings maps the branches, so you can see how far you have committed to a version of events.
H. H. Holmes, Psycho, and Saw
Supermassive built The Devil in Me as a standalone story inside the anthology’s shared universe, and left Easter eggs pointing at the other games. The premise comes from Holmes. The horror comes from films: Psycho (1960), The Shining (1980), Saw, Halloween and Friday the 13th.
There are few historical records of what the original Murder Castle looked like inside, so the art team modelled the hotel on period-accurate North American design to match the known exterior. The developers also built physical sets for the actors during motion capture, which was necessary once the movement systems expanded. That last decision shows. The hotel reads as a place with weight and corners, not a corridor of painted doors, and the shifting-wall trick lands harder because the rooms look like rooms first.
What the Traps Get Right
The best material in The Devil in Me is the house itself. Supermassive has spent years building games about people making bad calls under pressure, and here the pressure is architectural. The killer is not the threat. The building is. Walls that move when you are not looking, rooms that do not match the last time you saw them, and a set of traps that were clearly designed by someone who studied the original myth closely.
The collectables carry their weight too. Hidden items expand the hotel’s lore, and some show visions of what might happen later, which turns a scavenger hunt into a way of worrying about the future.
What the game does not solve is the writing underneath the machinery. The crew’s conflicts are drawn in broad strokes, and the performances are working harder than the script. Buckley is the anchor and plays Kate as the only person in the building who is thinking clearly, which makes her the most interesting target. Kaye gets the loudest material and the least of it.
The pacing sags in the middle. Once the crew is inside and the rules are clear, the game has to fill time between set pieces, and it does that with walking and conversation that does not advance much. The expanded exploration is the reason for the slowdown. Being able to run and climb is welcome, but a bigger hotel means more space to cross before something happens.
was born with the devil in me
A 7.4 Out of 10
The Devil in Me is the most mechanically ambitious Dark Pictures game and not the best written one. The movement, the tools, the inventory and the Bearings system all push the anthology somewhere new, and the Murder Castle is the strongest setting Supermassive has built. The cost is a middle stretch that drags and a cast whose problems are less interesting than the house they are trapped in.
It is still worth playing, and it is worth playing with the deaths left on. The permanent-death rule is the whole point. A horror game that lets you lose a protagonist and keeps going is trusting the player to sit with a bad outcome, and this one does that without flinching.
Fans of the earlier entries should know what they are getting. This is a longer, looser, more explorable Dark Pictures game, and its best ideas are structural rather than narrative. If the series keeps moving in this direction, the next one should spend as much effort on the people as on the walls.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me — 7.4 of 10
The Hard Numbers
- Score: 7.4 of 10
- Released: 2022
- Developer: Supermassive Games
- Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One
- Genre: Adventure; horror, thriller, survival
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative
- Perspective: Third person
- Playable protagonists: 5
- Setting: A modern-day replica of H. H. Holmes’s “Murder Castle,” on an island in Lake Michigan
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