Dead By Daylight

A group of survivors – anywhere from 1 to 4 players – must elude one player who is the killer in an enclosed forest area at night. The survivors’ perspective is in third-person, while the killer’s perspective is in first-person.

Survivors
The goal of the survivors is to escape the enclosed area, which can only be done in one of two ways: By activating a certain number of generators (usually the amount of generators is one more than the amount of survivors who are playing) so that they can activate any one of the large metal doors leading out of the area, or by escaping through a trapdoor that only appears when there is one survivor left, spawning in a random location. The survivors, who can either sprint, run, or crouch, must hide by using the darkness, crouching behind objects, in buildings, and in foliage, or hiding inside lockers.

In dealing with the killer, survivors can also make use of a handful of items and traps in the area – searching chests inside buildings will sometimes yield first-aid kits (which allow the survivors to heal themselves rather than wait for a teammate), flashlights (which can be used to temporarily blind the killer), and toolkits (which can be used both to repair generators faster and to disable the sacrificial meat hooks). One trap that survivors can use is a massive wooden pallet, many of which are placed upright, and can be pulled down when a survivor runs past them – if the killer is right behind them, the pallet will stun the killer for a brief period of time. The survivor can also vault over fallen pallets and climb through windows significantly faster than the lumbering killer can.

Repairing each generator takes a lengthy period of time, often featuring occasional and random reflex tests, where a needle appears within a circle on-screen and spins around, and the player must hit either the space bar or the left mouse button when the needle is within a certain section of the circle. Failure to do so will cause an explosion that will set back the progress of the generator repair, and also alert the killer. This same reflex trial appears when players attempt to heal their teammates.

If a survivor is caught by the killer, they can attempt to wiggle out of the killer’s grasp while he is carrying them, and attempt to run away. If the killer succeeds in impaling a survivor on one of the many meat hooks in the area, a teammate can rescue the impaled survivor, or, more rarely, the impaled survivor can pull themselves off the hook (although attempting this is likely to backfire and injure the survivor further, drawing them closer to death).

Once all generators are activated, a survivor must find a switch next to one of the possible exit doors and hold it for a certain period of time before the door can open. The game only ends when all survivors have either escaped or been killed – thus, while some survivors may escape and finish early, those still inside must keep playing.

Other technical advantages that survivors have include the ability to see the heat signature of injured teammates – thus easily drawing them to their location for a rescue – and can similarly see the heat signatures of newly-repaired generators and the exit doors once all necessary generators are repaired. When the killer is near, the survivors will hear intense music get louder and louder. They can also see a red light emanating from the killer’s eyes when they are being pursued.

Killer
The killer cannot run or crouch, but simply walks at a very fast pace. When hunting the survivors, the killer must capture them by either striking them twice with his machete (the first hit reduces the survivor to a limp, while the second hit drops them to crawling on the ground), or can grab them in one move by either catching them inside lockers or attempting to vault over pallets and through windows.

The killer can only kill the survivors by sacrificing them: Placing them on one of the many meat hooks in the area and waiting for the demonic claws to eventually finish off the survivor, carrying their soul into hell. If a survivor is impaled on a hook twice, then they are killed instantly the second time. After a player has earned enough experience points as the killer, certain perks can be unlocked that include the ability to finish off survivors instantly with the machete, rather than the lengthy process of taking them to the meat hooks.

Just as the survivors can use the wooden pallet traps (which the killer can destroy with their foot after activation), the killer can make use of bear traps lying around the area, and set them for survivors to trip and become trapped in them. However, it is possible for the killer to become stuck in a bear trap as well.

The killer, despite walking at a fast pace, is slower in most other movements: After striking a player, the killer will stop to wipe the blood off the machete. The killer is also slower in climbing through windows. The killer also has heat vision similar to the survivors, only for the killer it can be used to see the locations of every single generator and meat hook in the map.

The killer ultimately has the more difficult goal, as every single survivor must be killed in order to achieve victory.