Until Dawn

Until Dawn (2015) is a narrative horror game about eight friends staying in a mountainside lodge. As they settle in they are attacked by a foreboding figure that seems to have been following them. You choose how characters interact, where they go and how they respond to the situation. Inevitably, the group is split up and your goal to get all of them out alive.

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As you make decisions the narrative evolves in different directions. Some of these have to be made with limited time which helps to underline the sense of fear. Your choices also impact the relationships between characters and whether they survive. The consequences of each choice are not always clear, which means that saving the whole group is difficult. As you progress you can find and collect up artefacts. These offer clues about which choices to make as well as enabling you to find out what’s really going on. Some people will play multiple times to find the full set of artefacts and uncover the truth.

The novelty of Until Dawn is the range of possible narrative directions and outcomes. There are over 250 different endings and many different ways to reach them. The combination of suspense-horror, believable and interesting characters, and directing the protagonists makes for a unique experience.

There are a couple of spin-off games available:

• Until Dawn: Rush of Blood is a PlayStation VR shooting game where you try and survive a scary circus-themed rollercoaster. It takes place in the same universe as the original Until Dawn game but does not feature any characters from it.
• The Inpatient is a PlayStation VR first person narrative game and prequel to Until Dawn. You play as a patient at Blackwood Sanatorium 60 years prior to the original game.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Until Dawn 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Ellen Robertson and updated 7 months ago.