Dead by Daylight's Identity Crisis: When Horror Becomes a Costume Party
I love DbD, but I keep coming back to the same question: what kind of game does BHVR actually want this to be? Because right now, it feels like they’re throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.
Look at the killer roster and tell me it makes sense. We’ve got legitimate horror icons — Michael Myers, Alien, Freddy, Pig — standing alongside a K-Pop star throwing glowsticks, a cowboy with a harpoon gun, and a CEO with drones who looks like she stepped out of someone’s cyberpunk DeviantArt OC folder. This isn’t “subversive” design, it’s just confusing. Horror works because it maintains atmosphere, and when half your killers wouldn’t be out of place in Fortnite, you’ve lost that atmosphere entirely.
The most obvious offenders are Trickster and Skull Merchant. Trickster looks like glittery idol fan service more than a horror villain — cosplay bait with knives. Skull Merchant is no better, a cyberpunk OC with manga armor and drones that belong in a sci-fi tactics game. Legion isn’t scary either. Four teenagers in hoodies and dollar-store masks aren’t horror, they’re just suburban cosplay. Deathslinger is a cowboy bounty hunter better suited for Red Dead Redemption. Knight belongs in a fantasy MMO, not a horror anthology. And Artist ends up looking more like a Hollow Knight boss or a platformer enemy than anything haunting.
Even Plague misses the mark. She could’ve been the zombie archetype — imagine a Victorian-inspired plague zombie, something straight out of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (or even just a plague doctor). Instead, DbD gave us “what if Sumerian… but bad??” and leaned into vomit gimmicks that feel more gross-out than terrifying. And Singularity should have been the perfect techno-horror villain, a chilling AI gone rogue, but instead he looks like a Halo kitbash with wires. The community even nicknamed him “Larry,” because he’s more meme than menace. When your horror robot is being memed as someone’s uncle, the vibe is dead.
The license choices just underline this identity crisis. Instead of pulling from Vampire: The Masquerade, Outlast, or even Goosebumps (perfect for younger horror fans), we got D&D and Tomb Raider. Neither fits the genre. Vecna especially makes no sense — when D&D has Strahd von Zarovich, an actual gothic horror icon, sitting right there. Meanwhile, the archetypes horror has been built on for centuries — werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster, Phantom of the Opera, the Headless Horseman — are still missing. Fans sketch scarier chapters in a single afternoon than what makes it through “professional” pipelines.
Maps only make the inconsistency louder. Dead Dawg Saloon is just a Western set. Eyrie of Crows could’ve been a proper graveyard, but we got a sandy arena that looks more like concept art for Dark Souls than a horror location. DbD keeps bolting non-horror settings into its world, and the atmosphere dissolves every time. Maps should feel like part of a horror anthology, not a genre theme park.
Survivors suffer the same fate. They should look like Final Girls and Final Boys with cinematic presence, but instead we get placeholders like Haddie and Zarina. Compare DbD’s survivor designs to the Final Girl board game — every character there looks iconic, diverse, and instantly recognizable as a protagonist. That’s the bar, and DbD rarely clears it. The fact that players gravitate toward survivors like Feng or Sable isn’t an accident; those are the few who actually look like they belong on a movie poster.
Solo queue makes it worse. Horror movies are about friend groups being picked off one by one, not four strangers with no chemistry. SWF with Discord is closer to the real horror vibe — but it breaks the balance. Outlast Trials leaned into this and embraced the co-op dynamic fully. DbD should stop pretending solo queue fits its theme, and either give those players proper tools, redirect them to killer role, or accept that this is fundamentally a social game.
It all comes back to the same problem: BHVR wants DbD to be horror, casual, and esports all at once. You can’t do that without compromising. Horror requires atmosphere. Esports requires balance. Casual requires accessibility. Trying to juggle all three gives us exactly what we see now: killers that aren’t scary, survivors that aren’t heroic, maps that don’t belong, and matches that feel more like coin flips than tense horror.
The frustrating part is that BHVR has proven they can do it right. Spirit’s design. Clown’s lore. The cohesion of early chapters. They know how to nail atmosphere — they just keep abandoning it for marketable gimmicks. The fix isn’t complicated. Every killer concept should pass a simple test: “Would this work in a horror movie?” If not, it doesn’t belong. Maps should be modular horror spaces, not bolted to specific gimmicks. Survivors should look like they could carry their own horror film. And most importantly, DbD needs to stop trying to be everything at once and commit to being a true horror anthology.
DbD could be the definitive horror anthology game. Right now, it’s just a costume party. And one promising September chapter won’t erase years of thematic inconsistency. What do you think - is it not too late for BHVR to refocus on horror, or are we stuck with this identity crisis forever?