Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive drama from Supermassive Games for the PlayStation 4, and it is the best video game version of a teen slasher film anyone has made. Eight friends return to an isolated mountain lodge a year after two of their group vanished there, and the retreat becomes a nightmare with no easy way out. The catch, and the whole design, is that any of the eight can die, and whether they do depends on you.
The Butterfly Effect
The game calls its system the butterfly effect. Small choices, a line of dialogue, a path taken, a moment of hesitation, ripple forward into whether a character lives or dies hours later, and the game tracks all of it. Nobody is safe. Every one of the eight can survive to dawn and every one can be lost, and the sense that your decisions genuinely matter is stronger here than in almost any game built on choice.
The Cast
The characters are slasher archetypes on purpose, the jock, the joker, the final girl, and the game’s trick is to let you decide whether they stay archetypes. Played with attention, the friends become people. Played carelessly, they die like extras. The performances, captured from a cast of recognizable actors, are strong enough to make the deaths hurt, and the dialogue has a self-aware edge that keeps the genre trappings from turning stale.
The Horror
The lodge, the mines and the mountain are built for dread, and the game’s fixed cameras and slow walks down dark corridors are pure slasher grammar. Quick-time events handle the action, and a mechanic that asks you to hold the controller perfectly still while something hunts you is one of the most effective bits of tension design on the console.
The Story
The plot starts as a masked killer and becomes something else, and the turn in the second half is either a satisfying reveal or a disappointment depending on how much you liked the first half’s premise. The game is honest about its influences and generous with its twists.
The Remake
Ballistic Moon remade the game in 2024 for PlayStation 5 and PC, with overhauled visuals, new camera controls, a reworked prologue, new collectables and areas and a new “Stay Calm” mechanic. A 2025 film set in the same universe followed. The original is still the version that surprised people.
Where It Falls Short
The controls are stiff, and walking through the lodge is slow even when nothing is chasing you. The collectable totems, which hint at possible futures, are more clutter than clue. The second half’s shift in genre costs the game some of the first half’s focus. And a single playthrough is short, with replay value that depends on wanting to see the others die.
The Verdict
Until Dawn is a smart, scary, genuinely consequential horror game that understood its genre well enough to make the player complicit in it. It is best played in one night with friends shouting at the screen, which is exactly what its designers intended.
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