The Casting of Frank Stone review

“From the world of Dead by Daylight,” reads the tagline of The Casting of Frank Stone. If you’re not familiar with Dead by Daylight, Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical multiplayer tour de force, there’s a good chance that may put you off. But don’t let it: developed by Supermassive Games, the talent behind Until Dawn, The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology, The Casting of Frank Stone is very much its own story. And it’s a story well worth jumping into. I don’t say this lightly, but it’s up there with Supermassive’s best.

The Casting of Frank Stone’s story is split over three time periods. It begins in 1963, with police officer Sam Green exploring a steel mill where it’s believed a missing boy could be. But upon exploring the underbelly of the mill, Sam finds much more than he bargained for: the hidden lair of serial killer Frank Stone. If you read my preview last month, this opening chapter is what I played.

From there, the story moves on to the present day, and we’re introduced to Madi and Linda who are on their way to a big, eerie mansion for reasons yet unknown. The third timeline takes place in 1980, where Linda — the same Linda — is making a horror movie with her friends. It’s not immediately clear, but every timeline overlaps in an important way, and at the centre of everything is Frank Stone.

I wouldn’t say that The Casting of Frank Stone is the scariest of all games by Supermassive. The likes of House of Ashes and The Devil in Me gave more jump scares, I think. But it doesn’t matter, not really, because it’s the story here that keeps you playing. What it lacks in artificial jump scares it makes up for in thick, foreboding atmosphere: it has that in droves. You’re never quite sure what awaits you around a corner in The Casting of Frank Stone, and that’s part of the beauty of it.

Like other games from Supermassive, you could describe The Casting of Frank Stone as an interactive movie. Sure, there are setpieces where all you’re doing is watching and reacting appropriately with a quick time event or a dialogue choice. But you’ll be spending much more time exploring your environment, solving puzzles and hunting down hidden secrets and collectibles. The balance feels perfect — there’s just the right amount of both storytelling and adventure to make for a captivating horror experience.

It helps that The Casting of Frank Stone looks absolutely stunning. I’ve played on PS5 for review, and it’s undoubtedly the best-looking game from Supermassive yet. Its environments are stunning; photorealistic at times. But it’s the characters and their facial animations that really steal the show. Emotions are perfectly captured, and while there’s the odd duff expression here and there, the animation truly sells the story as if you were watching an actual movie. The acting is absolutely on-point, too, with the whole cast doing a fantastic job of selling their characters.

I’m reticent to give too much away about the narrative, but it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that there’s some multiverse shenanigans at play here: it is part of the world of Dead by Daylight after all. Depending how entrenched you are in certain sci-fi properties, you might not bat an eyelid, but trying to wrap your head around how everything comes to be in The Casting of Frank Stone gave me a bit of a headache. It leaves questions, let’s put it that way.

But overall, I was completely sold on the overall plot, helped along by the believable and, for the most part, likeable characters. There’s one particular character who I could not stand, but I think that’s the whole point of them — I shan’t say who, but if you start playing, I have a feeling you’ll know as soon as they appear on screen.

The Casting of Frank Stone is a surprising treat in numerous ways. It’s longer than I expected, taking somewhere between six and eight hours to complete depending on how thorough you are in exploring each area. I was expecting Dark Pictures length, but this is more on par with The Quarry. It warrants that running time too, packing in a lot of thrills, adventuring and storytelling. It’s also surprising in that it does a fantastic job of pulling you into the world of Dead by Daylight: it might not rely on you knowing much about the universe, but there’s a good chance you’ll come away wanting to play. When it was announced, a collaboration between Supermassive and Behaviour sounded strange, but seeing it come to fruition, it’s nothing less than a stroke of genius.