While I don’t think it’s entirely desirable to cater specially towards kids, I’d say you’d unironically a have to start looking at ‘characters’ like Herobrine or whatever Fortnite has regarding original slasher-esque characters.

Makes us look old but the only things we can think of off the top of our heads is siren head. Most newer horror that we've seen have been either unique indi games or rather generic (ex: some flavor of zombies). Maybe outlast colab?

Slenderman is just not happening at all

Kinda hard to market a chapter when the attached character can be linked to a high profile IRL attempted murder

As a Gen Z myself, my dream chapter would be a FromSoftware collaboration having Orphan of Kos and Midra as killers and Patches as a survivor.

On a second note, as someone who grew up with creepypastas, Slenderman would also be awesome.

I miss Gen Z by a couple years but I'd say Slenderman also, Marble Hornets was pretty popular.

I don't think Gen Z and Alpha should be lumped together in this context. A lot of Gen Z are young adults (like me) or late year teens, with the youngest in it turning 13 I believe as of 2025. Marketing a chapter to people like us is very different from 12 year olds and below, not just because of age differences but simply in that we've been exposed to very different internets with different horror icons at different points in their legacy.

For example, I see a character like Herobrine referenced here, but I honestly haven't heard that name since like 2016 in relevance, Gen Alpha might know him, but his reign of popularity was probably before they were on iPads.

More to the point, Slender is like the face of internet creepypasta. The real life incident is incredibly tragic and might stand in the way of a DBD inclusion, but if we're talking a character whose design elements and tropes can be seen in various popular works over the years after his creation, I can't think of any other Ip with as much influence in Internet spaces. SCP would be fun, but likely a licencing nightmare with Creative Commons in the context of a pre-existing work like DBD.

SCP 049 the plague doctor.

American Psycho memes are more so because it's Christian Bale. You know who else Christian Bale played?

Batman. Give us a Batman chapter.

A Backrooms-type chapter would be cool, mostly because the concept of "liminal spaces" (look it up, it is on Wikipedia) is not tied to a specific generation.

I would love an "Infinite IKEA" map. Of course it would not be infinite (and not IKEA…) but there are many games with maps where you go from one side to the opposite, like in a cylinder or a sphere

Midra causing survivors to die of madness would be interesting

Slenderman, Poppy from Poppy's Playtime, Bendy from Bendy and the Ink Machine. Basically "Mascot Horror" is super popular right now. Anything that can be turned into plushie of some kind.

(And yes, I've seen Myers plushies and things but I'd argue that's because it's popular right now. When those movies first came out merchandise wasn't like that, more so movie posters or bloody shirts with metal font. When Scream came out I didn't see a body pillow of Ghost Face for sale….so thank goodness we have them now, take my money!!)

Considering that I am in the same age range, albeit slightly younger, I would say Outlast or Amnesia.

yeah I was going to say probably outlast also, or something from the forest, maybe something from Elden ring, or like an scp.

Outside of the few big names left, I don't think anything would have as much pull as FNAF at this point. Other mascot horror like Bendy, Poppy Playtime or Spooky just don't have enough oomph. Slender is more Millennials then Z IMO so I don't think it'd have that much pull at this point. That said it'd be my first choice for an indie license.

No joke, the guy who mentioned skibidi toilet is right. That would pull in people since it's very popular, will probably stay popular for a while and is so stupid as a DBD concept that it would draw in people that had no interest. It'd also be very easy to make videos off of so you'd see an explosion from content creators.

Just the thought of some of these things being in-game is enough to keep me up at night. Too scary of a chapter for me already.

Bendy with it's Ink Demon design from the "Bendy and the Dark Revival" could be a very interesting and unique killer. Something with the Ink spreading in the Terror Radius could be neat and the design of the Ink Demon itself is amazing.

Bendy is not as influencial as Fnaf (Tbf, nothing in horror is, Fnaf must be the most popular horror IP right now) but Bendy is also one of the best IP of the mascot horror. I'd argue it's the N°2 after Fnaf but maybe it's Poppy Playtime.

The games are not perfect at all, but they are interesting from an art/lore point. Pastra, an horror specialized youtuber has a lot of contents discussing the design of the Bendy games, it's interesting.

Now in term of actual pull, i think it's 90/10 on the gameplay, Alien failed even tho it was a big name and it's adaptation was very faithful to the IP. The problem is, the gameplay is boring for most, between the lack of dashes and the turrets, people have just dropped it. Chucky succeded because it's a simple to understand, easy to play dash based killer, well, it was at least. I would agree with TheFakeBanette that is a Chucky main with a lot of cool podcasts, Chucky is still very much playable and strong right now, but his skill floor is much higher than before.

Banette used the comparison with Blight, saying something akin to "Imagine if Blight was nerfed to B tier, he would still be strong, but disgustingly weak compared to before".

If Chucky launched like he is right now, we wouldn't have as much Chucky players compared to what happened, because it isn't the IP that created the Chucky mains, it's the gameplay (well for the vast majority, i know there is hardcore Chucky fans that will play him no matter what).

That is always the risk with big names, anticipation, expectations, we know the Fnaf chapter is never going to be like everyone wants, between the Fnaf haters, the slowdown concepts with the springlock suits, the stealth/phantom concepts, the trap concepts, the multi killers concepts, the "i don't want springtrap to be the killer" concept, the choice of the map, the skins etc, it's likely this chapter will end up with the Alien effect and some hardocre fans staying around.

The IP names are only usefull for the initial hype after that, it's up to gameplay. Most of the dbd community does not even know the IP before they are introduced or by name only, so having an IP like Bendy would be a gameplay check and a nice surprise for those that knows it.

Until Dawn

but I lost the hope :/

I'm really surprised no one (at least as far as I know, if you did, sorry) even mentioned Granny.

The game was pretty popular, is more or less a spiritual successor to Slenderman, and many people know what it's about.

There are some big cons to it, like the very low quality model of her, the game being currently treated as garbage for some reason, ect., but still.

This game shouldn't even be aimed at gen alpha... If they don't meet the age requirement of a mature game, why market to them?

Creepypasta collection, SCP collection. I'm pretty exited for FNAF tbh.