In December 2023, a new chapter of the hit horror video game series Dead By Daylight was announced. Instead of new additions to the core multiplayer game that the series is known for, Behaviour Interactive instead revealed a new single-player driven experience in collaboration with Supermassive Games, dubbed The Casting of Frank Stone. A shroud of mystery still surrounds Frank Stone–aside from its reveal trailer and an interactive teaser website, the developers have been keeping additional details under the wraps.
As a huge fan of both Dead By Daylight and Supermassive Games’ titles like Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, I immediately jumped at the chance to touch base with both development teams to see what, if any, further details I could find out. I managed to unearth some clues from Behavour Interactive’s Mathieu Cote and Dave Richard, as well as Supermassive Games’ Steve Goss–read on to learn a bit more about Frank Stone!
Bloody Disgusting: How long has this partnership between Behaviour Interactive and Supermassive Games been in the works? What was the biggest appeal of a collaboration, and how did that conversation come about?
Mathieu: It’s been a few years. We’ve been trying to find a new way to tell Dead By Daylight stories to our fans. A few years ago we opened The Archives with the Rift, and that was a great way for us to tell more backstories and more in-depth lore. We saw that people really dig it. We realized that there’s a really big portion of our fanbase that’s interested in that kind of stuff, so we knew we wanted to find new ways to tell those stories.
So one of the ways was to look into a single-player narrative experience. Since we don’t have that expertise internally, we looked outside, and of course, when you’re talking about single-player narrative experiences–especially horror teams–for us the top pick was Supermassive Games. They’re the first people we talked to. At first, they weren’t available, so we put that idea aside and looked at other candidates, but really, it was kind of a bummer. So we kept it in the back of our minds for a bit, until a couple months–maybe a year later–we had a couple more chats with Supermassive and they said, “By the way, we’re available now if you still want to do this!”
The conversations started almost immediately, “So what story are we going to tell? What are we going to build here?” It went really fast after that.
BD: What’s been each of your favorite parts about working and collaborating with the opposite team?
Steve: Working with a developer and publisher that has such a well-rounded IP–so much depth and breadth to the lore–that’s been really exciting. A lot of our stories lean into this idea of “truths” that we explore, and when you work with a franchise or IP that already has [that foundation], it’s like–great! I don’t have to use Google anymore, it’s all already here, and off we can go. There was a story that we wanted to tell, and we could fit it into that universe, and we had a lot of freedom to play with a lot of interesting things in that universe.
Dave: On our side, it was super fun to see how Supermassive works–it was like a Masterclass in building the type of games that they do. They really are masters at their craft, and it was really interesting to see their process and how it connects to their world-building.
BD: On that note, what does The Casting of Frank Stone mean for the Dead By Daylight universe? Does it answer any questions that fans have had about Dead By Daylight’s lore?
Steve: 100% in the Dead By Daylight universe. We [Supermassive] brought our bag of tricks with us–there’ll be a lot of familiarity if you’ve played games like Until Dawn or The Quarry, but then there’s huge sections of the game that feel nothing like a traditional Supermassive game because we’re exploring a connection to the Dead By Daylight experience. There’s a kind of balance between those two things.
Dave: And will Dead By Daylight players learn something about the [Dead by Daylight] universe? Absolutely. There’s a way that players will be able to explore the Dead By Daylight world that would be impossible to do in the multiplayer game.
BD: Dead By Daylight and Supermassive Games’ previous titles have been heavily influenced by existing horror media. Is there any specific inspirations or muses you can reveal for The Casting of Frank Stone?
Steve: Oof, that may give too much away! There’s lots and lots of inspiration–but I’m [Supermassive] not really in the business of just copying things. If you asked me who my favorite writer is, I’d say Stephen King, and therefore, I can’t help myself whenever I start to think about narratives and characters, I lean on things that feel familiar.
Yes, we’ve [Supermassive] watched a lot and read a lot–no one is free from their influences–but one of the key things that we wanted to do was make sure that it was a great story with Dead By Daylight, and without Dead By Daylight. So you can approach The Casting of Frank Stone knowing Dead By Daylight, and you can approach it without knowing Dead By Daylight, and both approaches are rewarding. But of course, as Dave said, there’s a lot hidden away in the game that’s all about Dead By Daylight’s universe, but it’s also a standalone story and will still make sense to you even if you haven’t played Dead By Daylight.
BD: Ever since the interactive teaser went live, I’ve been seeing a lot of really compelling fan theories about what the game could potentially entail. Some of them dig really deep into Dead By Daylight lore. I’m curious if you’ve noticed any compelling ones?
Mathieu: Personally, that’s always my favorite bit–whenever we tease something that is tied to something really big, I love just grabbing my popcorn and watching the most deranged theories that come out of it. And people really have dug deep–like screenshots, small details of things, “Oh, the saturation of this thing probably means that it’s absolutely related to this other thing,” or “Oh, have you seen the shape of the shadow in the background? Clearly it’s this guy.” I love it. Is there a favorite? No, but I’ve watched a lot of them, and all of them entertain me. And most of them are wrong.
Dave: I’m sure Steve and Mathieu would agree with me, but part of our job is to surprise and delight, so obviously there’s going to be some twists and turns.
BD: On that note, what are you most excited about that you can reveal?
Steve: That’s a knife to skip around, isn’t it? Within what we’re revealing right now, we’re all excited about the central character that we’re framing and all the conversations around Frank Stone–and yes, his name is a play on words. It’s interesting to have an antagonist in the foreground. I think it’s really interesting to start off the discussion of a story where you’re not putting a standard character at the foreground [and putting the antagonist at the foreground instead]–I think that’s a brave decision we’ve made, and it also speaks heavily to the lore of Dead By Daylight, the roles that players want to take, and the stories they want to explore.
Mathieu: There’s nothing specific we can talk about, but clearly I want to watch people play this. They’re going to be able to dive into the world of Dead By Daylight in a way that hasn’t been done before, and I want to see people immersed, freaked out–all of the emotion that’s going to come out of it. That’s one significant thing that’s going to come out of The Casting of Frank Stone: that it’s going to trigger emotions in people.
BD: Steve, you brought up a great point about the roles that players take on when playing Dead By Daylight. Some players prefer to play as survivors vs. killers, and vice versa. I know you can’t speak on anything specific to gameplay at this point in time, but would you say there’s something for everyone with The Casting of Frank Stone in that regard?
Steve: Yes, there is. There’s something there for whatever your proclivity might be. But again, it won’t be what you think or expect–it won’t be something that you could pick up on now [given what’s been revealed]. We always find that people who play a classic Supermassive game tend to like the idea that they’re directing the “movie”, that they’re in control, “That person’s gonna die, that person’s gonna live”–they can make those decisions. All of that will remain true in The Casting of Frank Stone, but in very different ways and experiences that perhaps lean more into Dead By Daylight.
Dave: I can add to this thought too. We know that in the Dead By Daylight community, there’s a lot of fans of the universe that actually don’t play the core game for a variety of reasons–like, maybe multiplayer isn’t for them. This will be a great opportunity for those fans to become players in the Dead by Daylight universe. We want to make the Dead By Daylight universe as accessible as possible.