Until Dawn

Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive drama survival horror game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Players assume control of eight young adults who have to survive on Blackwood Mountain when their lives are threatened. The game features a butterfly effect system in which players must make choices that may change the story. All playable characters can survive or die, depending on the choices made. Players explore the environment from a third-person perspective and find clues that may help solve the mystery. Until Dawn was originally planned as a first-person game for the PlayStation 3's motion controller PlayStation Move. The motion controls were dropped when it became a PlayStation 4 game. The script was written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who sought to create the video game equivalent of a slasher film. The development team took inspiration from various sources. These include the movies Evil Dead II and Poltergeist, and video games Heavy Rain, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. To ensure the game was scary, the team used a galvanic skin response test to measure playtesters' fear levels when playing it. Jason Graves composed the soundtrack and Guerrilla Games' Decima game engine was used for the graphics. Several noted actors, including Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, Meaghan Martin, Brett Dalton, Jordan Fisher, Nichole Sakura, and Peter Stormare provided motion capture and voice acting. Until Dawn was announced at Gamescom 2012 and released for the PlayStation 4 in August 2015. Although there was little marketing effort from Sony, its sales surpassed expectations. The game received generally positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for multiple year-end accolades. Critics praised the branching nature of the story, butterfly effect system, world building, characters, music, voice acting, gameplay design. and use of quick time events, but criticized the controls, mostly the second half of the story, camera angles, character movements, and partially linear plot. Supermassive followed the game with a virtual reality spin-off, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (2016), and a prequel, The Inpatient (2018), while a spiritual successor, The Quarry, was released in 2022. A remake for PlayStation 5 and Windows was released on 4 October 2024. A film adaptation of the game was released in April 2025.