Until Dawn

“

Eight friends. One killer. No escape.

”

Until Dawn is an interactive drama survival horror game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4, originally released worldwide on August 25, 2015.

At the 2023 Game Awards, a remake developed by Ballistic Moon for the PlayStation 5 and PC was announced, and it was released on October 4, 2024.

In January 2024, an Until Dawn film was announced, which was released in theaters on April 25, 2025.

Gameplay[]

The gameplay of Until Dawn centers on narrative choices and player-driven consequences. Set on the desolate Blackwood Mountain in Alberta, Canada, Until Dawn gives players control over eight protagonists as they attempt to survive until dawn. The game blends cinematic storytelling with interactive gameplay, as the decisions the player makes on the behalf of the characters shape the story, outcome, and their fates.

Until Dawn lends itself to multiple playthroughs, as players cannot see all content in a single run. Each playthrough will last about seven to nine hours in length, and the game mechanics utilize a system called the Butterfly Effect, in which any choice of action by the player may cause unforeseen consequences later on. For example, locating a weapon in an earlier chapter may allow the player to pick it up down the line when a chase scene leads back to the same room. Throughout the game, players will make difficult decisions during ethical or moral dilemmas, such as sacrificing one character to save another. The Butterfly Effect system blurs the line between right and wrong decisions and it is possible for players to keep all eight characters alive as well as having all eight of them die, allowing for many different paths and scenarios as well as offering several different endings for each character. In Until Dawn, characters also have a traits and relationships system that changes based on player choices. Strong relationships can lead to help in crucial moments, while conflict may have consequences later.

Until Dawn has a strict auto-save system to prevent players from reloading a previous save file to an earlier point in the game if they regret an in-game decision they have made. The only way to change the player's choice is to restart the game from the beginning or continue to the end and start a new game. The developers have stated that Until Dawn has "hundreds of endings." Different endings have different variations depending on the combination of characters alive at the end of the game.

Clues can be found throughout the game, helping the player uncover the mystery on Blackwood Mountain.

The gameplay is focused on exploration, quick-time events and discovering clues, as well as making decisions. There is an in-game system that will keep track of all of the clues and secrets players have discovered in total, even if there are multiple playthroughs; these clues will allow the player to piece together the mysteries of Blackwood Mountain. Unique to Until Dawn is its Don't Move mechanic, prompting the player to keep their controller as still as possible during tense moments.

Matt finds a Guidance Totem, revealing Emily handing him a . — Matt finds a Guidance Totem, revealing Emily handing him a flare gun.

Totems are also scattered across the mountain, providing visions of potential future events to help and guide the player. The totems will either provide premonitions of guidance, good fortune, loss of a friend, potential death of the person finding the totem, or a dangerous event that may take place.

A system is added to keep progress of all the secrets the player finds, which can help piece things together.

Characters[]

Until Dawn follows eight main protagonists, who visit Blackwood Mountain for an annual winter getaway, and all eight can be controlled by the player at various points. The playable characters are young adults, most of whom humiliated Josh's sister Hannah, causing her and her twin sister, Beth, to run away into the woods a year before, never to be seen again.

Protagonists[]

Supporting Characters[]

Peter Stormare as Dr. Alan J. Hill
Ella Lentini as Hannah and Beth Washington
Larry Fessenden as Jack Fiddler (The Stranger)

Antagonists[]

Plot[]

Prologue[]

On February 2, 2014, Josh and his twin sisters Hannah and Beth invite their collective friends (Sam, Mike, Jessica, Emily, Matt, Ashley, and Chris) to the Washington Lodge on Blackwood Mountain for their annual winter getaway.

After the party, some of the group conspire to play a prank on Hannah, who has a crush on Mike despite him already dating Emily. While Josh and Chris are passed out drunk in the kitchen, Mike invites Hannah up to the guest room where, unbeknownst to her, Jessica, Emily, Matt and Ashley are hiding. As Hannah starts taking off her clothes, she becomes aware of the group's presence and feels humiliated. Sam bursts into the room to warn Hannah, but finds out she's too late. Hannah runs out of the lodge and into the snowy woods as everyone follows after her, trying to apologize and convince her to come back. Beth hears the commotion and learning that Hannah has been pranked, she angrily tells the group off and chases after her sister.

Finding her way in the middle of the woods, Beth finally locates a crying Hannah and comforts her. Suddenly, they hear a violent noise and begin to run from an unseen pursuer. As they're cornered at the edge of a cliff, Hannah slips and falls while holding Beth's hand, taking her down with her. Beth manages to hang onto a large branch, holding Hannah with her other hand. An unknown man appears and extends his hand to help the twins, but Hannah and Beth both fall to their apparent deaths, never to be seen again.

Present Day[]

"Boom: Butterfly Effect." - Plot and ending details follow.

A year later, on the anniversary of Hannah and Beth's disappearance, the remaining seven friends accept Josh's invitation back to the mountain. However, there is immediate tension in the group due to Mike and Emily breaking up and dating Jessica and Matt respectively, which leads to conflict between the girls or the boys. As everyone separates to partake in their own festivities, their seemingly idyllic getaway begins to quickly turn sinister in more ways than one.

Mike and Jessica head to a guest cabin for some alone time when Jessica is kidnapped by an unknown creature. Mike chases after her and finds Jess either dead or alive before she falls deep into the mines. He then follows a mystery man whom he believes killed Jessica to an abandoned Sanatorium, where Mike discovers information about a mining accident in 1952 and experiments performed on the surviving miners.

Ashley, Chris, and Josh use a spirit board to communicate with spirits and make contact with either of the Washington twins. Convinced that friends are messing with him, Josh storms off. Chris and Ashley investigate the spirit's clue, but are knocked unconscious by a mask-wearing psychopath and Ashley is kidnapped. Chris tracks her down and finds both Ashley and Josh in a Jigsaw-like trap. The psycho forces Chris to choose between saving one of them, however, regardless of his action, Josh is violently bisected by the trap.

Matt and Emily leave to look for her lost bag, but decide to return back to the lodge after finding several creepy signs. Learning from Chris and Ashley about the maniac, they travel to the cable car station to get help but discover that the keys are missing. The couple then locates a radio tower and call the mountain rangers for help, who inform them that assistance won't arrive until dawn. An unknown creature causes the structure to collapse by cutting one of its cables, sending it along with Emily and Matt into the mines, with the latter possibly confronted and killed by the creature.

Sam takes a bath, but discovers her clothes are missing. Thinking her friends have stolen it, she looks around the lodge for them, only to discover a footage of Josh's death and encounter a psycho. A chase ensues and Sam is either knocked unconscious or escapes into the killer's workshop, where she finds evidences of the psycho's identity. Regardless, Sam reunites with Mike, who escaped the Sanatorium through a network of underground tunnels.

In continuous interludes, a psychiatrist, Dr. Hill, conducts an interview with an unseen figure, asking questions as the narrative progresses. In each interlude, Dr. Hill's office grows more grotesque and dilapidated, reflecting the choices the player makes during each interview interlude. Depending on the former choices of the player, Dr. Hill himself may change in appearance, becoming sickly and maimed. Eventually, he is revealed to simply be a hallucination in the psychopath's mind.

As more sinister events unfold, the psychopath captures Chris and Ashley as they were looking for Sam, and gives Chris the choice to sacrifice himself to spare Ashley or shoot her to save himself or neither option in another Saw-esque trap. As the trap is revealed to be a farce and Mike and Sam find Chris and Ashley, the Psycho then reveals himself to be Josh, who faked his death and was playing a prank on the group the whole time in retaliation for their prank that indirectly caused his sisters' disappearance the previous year. Mike and Chris capture Josh and leave him tied up in a shed. Meanwhile, Emily is shown wandering through the abandoned mines, where she may find Beth's head and learn that Hannah had actually survived the fall off the cliff. Emily then encounters the Stranger that Mike had followed, who helps her escape from the creature. In her escape, Emily can be killed or manages to get back to the lodge.

The Stranger then confronts the main group at the lodge and explains to them that he is a protector of the mountain, which is infested with humanoid creatures called Wendigos, former humans who became monsters by committing cannibalism. The Stranger explains that they will not be able to escape to safety until dawn, which is when the Wendigos cease their hunt, and there are only a few ways to kill Wendigos, such as by fire. Chris and the Stranger decide to go rescue Josh from the shed, but discover that he has vanished, having been kidnapped by the Wendigo. The Stranger is decapitated by the Wendigo immediately afterwards. Chris either makes it back to the lodge or is killed by the Wendigo. Sam, Mike, Ashley, and if still alive, Chris and Emily, take refuge in the lodge basement for safety.

Mike returns to the Sanatorium in search of Josh, hoping to find the key to the cable car for the group to be able to leave the mountain quickly, but encounters dozens of Wendigos (the miners, which the Stranger had imprisoned there), forcing him to destroy the Sanatorium to escape. Meanwhile, Ashley and Sam discover more information about the Wendigos from the Stranger's notes and Sam decides she and the rest of the group from the safe room have to go after him through the tunnels to save him. As they reach a rock wall, Sam goes alone after Mike; while the others, if any of them are still alive following the walk through the tunnels, go back to the lodge. Sam saves Mike from a Wendigo either in the mines or the Sanatorium. They eventually find Josh in the mines suffering from extreme hallucinations. As they head back to the lodge, Hannah, who is revealed to have turned into a Wendigo after eating Beth's body, recaptures Josh. Depending on a clue that was found or not, Hannah either kills Josh or recognizes and spares him, though drags him back to her lair.

If Matt and/or Jess are still alive at this point, they have a separate encounter with the Wendigo in the mines and attempt to evade it or otherwise die trying. Meanwhile, Sam, Mike, and whoever is still alive between Ashley, Chris and Emily, regroup at the lodge only to find it overrun with Wendigos, including Hannah. The creatures, which are now fighting amongst themselves, cause a gas leak; Mike and Sam get the idea to ignite the gas with an electrical spark. This causes an explosion that destroys the lodge, kills all of the Wendigos (including Hannah), and can result in the deaths of most of the remaining survivors inside the lodge, including Mike and/or Sam, depending on the player's choices. Outside, as the sun rises, rescue helicopters arrive to take the survivors away if any are left.

During the end credits, the group conducts interviews at a police station where they explain their story. If Josh has survived it is revealed that he is cannibalizing the Stranger's body, leading him to transform into a Wendigo. If at least one other protagonist survives, two police officers will explore the mines and discover a half-turned Josh, who spots them and seemingly prepares to attack them.

Development[]

Until Dawn originally started development back in 2008 by a different studio named London Studio. This project, however, was eventually scrapped and handed to Supermassive Games, who then went on to develop and later announce Until Dawn for the PlayStation 3 and had the intent of utilizing Sony's PlayStation Move controller. Set in a first-person perspective, the PlayStation Move controlled the player's flashlight, and a torch would be used to switch between the eight playable characters.

The game first appeared at Gamescom 2012, with a trailer and gameplay footage being shown to the public. The gameplay footage mainly focused on Mike and Jessica as they head towards a secluded cabin to have sex and be away from their friends. The footage concluded with Jessica being dragged out a window by an unidentified assailant.^[3]

With the game unreleased as 2013 came to a close, reports surfaced that Until Dawn was canceled. This was denied by developer Supermassive Games, who stated the game would be out at a later date.

Until Dawn reappeared at Gamescom 2014, where it was revealed the game was now a PlayStation 4 exclusive and took place in a third-person perspective. The DualShock 4's motion sensor replaced the PlayStation Move for controlling the player's flashlight, and the torch feature was dropped for a more traditional level approach, with the characters becoming playable in different parts of the game.^[4] In addition to a new trailer, a demo was presented to the public for the first time, which focused on Ashley and Chris in their attempts to locate their missing friend Sam. This demo ended with the two in a deadly trap and Chris forced to either shoot Ashley or himself to stop the trap.^[5]

Another trailer and demo were released in December 2014. Intended to highlight the game's more action-oriented side (as opposed to the previous demo, which dealt with moral decisions), the demo placed players in the role of Sam during an encounter with the killer. Sam could either die, be knocked out, or escape by the demo's end.^[6]

A fourth trailer was released on Valentine's Day, which paid attention to the romantic relationships between the eight characters.^[7]

On May 26th, 2015, the game's release date was confirmed to be August 25th, 2015. This announcement coincided with a new trailer, which revealed the presence of Dr. Hill, a psychiatrist portrayed by Peter Stormare. It also announced a pre-order bonus which would include a bonus scene between Matt and Emily in the mountains, soon learning that they aren't alone. Multiple additions of the game were confirmed, which will include a standard edition of the game, an extended edition, and a steelbook edition.^[8]

At E3 2015, a demo was shown that followed Emily and Matt while they traveled to the radio tower in hopes of signaling for help. Depending on the choices made, Matt could be knocked off of a cliff or impaled on a fish hook, and Emily would fall off of the radio tower.

On July 13, 2015, Supermassive Games allowed certain video game reviewers to post ten minutes of footage. This footage included a video with showed the prologue of the game, where Beth searched for her sister Hannah after some of the survivors played a prank on her, an updated version of the original video where Jessica and Mike head up to the cabin to have sex, only for Jessica to be captured and possibly killed, and several other nine to ten minute segments of gameplay footage.

Reception[]

Until Dawn received positive reviews from critics. It received an aggregated score of 80.26% on GameRankings based on 54 reviews and 79/100 on Metacritic based on 68 reviews. It was the second best-selling game in the UK in its first week of release, debuting at No. 2 on the UK retail software sales chart, behind Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.

The praise was directed at the visuals, choice mechanic, horror elements, music, voice acting and gameplay design. Most of the criticism the game drew were concerning the story, mostly the second half, camera angles, character movements and a partially linear plot.

The game sold 1.38 million units as of January 2nd, 2016, making it a financial success, surpassing the developer's expectations. VGChartz, a game sales tracker, lists the figure as 4.03 million units, as of February 2022.^[9]

Special Releases[]

Extended Edition[]

The Extended Edition of Until Dawn consists of the original game, with a DLC bonus segment of Matt and Emily in Chapter 2. The Extended Edition DLC is also included in the digital version of the game in Europe.

Press Kit Edition[]

The Until Dawn Press Kit Edition is a limited edition release of Until Dawn, featuring a copy of the game with multiple exclusive collectibles.

Awards and Nominations[]

Date	Ceremony	Category	Recipient(s) and nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
2015	Golden Joystick Awards	PlayStation Game of the Year	Until Dawn	Nominated	^[10]
	Global Game Awards	Best Horror Game		Won	^[11]
	Global Game Awards	Best Original Game		Third	^[11]
	The Game Awards	Best Narrative		Nominated	^[12]
2016	New Statesmen's Top 10 Video Games of 2015	Best Game		Seventh	^[13]
	Hardcore Gamer's Best of 2015	Best Adventure Game		Runner-Up	^[14]
	PlayStation Blog's Best of 2015	Best PS4 Game		Nominated	^[15] ^[16]
	PlayStation Blog's Best of 2015	Best Story		Runner-Up	^[15] ^[16]
	SXSW Gaming Awards	Excellence in Technical Achievement		Nominated	^[17]^[18]
	National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers	Performance in a Drama Supporting	Brett Dalton as Mike	Nominated	^[19]
	National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers	Use of Sound, New IP	Until Dawn	Nominated	^[19]
	British Academy Games Awards	British Game		Nominated	^[20]
		Game Innovation		Nominated
		Original Property		Won
		Story		Nominated

Trivia[]

Until Dawn was initially going to be a PS3 release with PlayStation Move compatibility.
- From 2008 to March 2011, Until Dawn was being developed by London Studio, before it was handed over to Supermassive Games where it was almost completely reworked. It featured a similar setting and premise, but had a completely different main cast and plot.
  - Supermassive Games had already started developing their own similar game in 2010 before being handed the Until Dawn property by Sony.^[21] According to executive director Will Byles, his game was originally called Beyond, but the title was kept as Until Dawn after Quantic Dream announced Beyond: Two Souls, as Supermassive Games wanted to avoid the idea that these games were related.^[22]
The posters in the lodge's private theater are all from indie horror films produced by Larry Fessenden and sound-designed by Graham Reznick, the scriptwriters of Until Dawn.
- The posters are for the following movies: "The House of the Devil", "Stake Land", "The Innkeepers", "Bitter Feast", "Automatons", and "Hypothermia".
All trophies' titles are film references. For example, the outcome of one Emily scene will get you either "The Exorcism of Emily" or "Let eM In", and keeping all four boys alive in one playthrough gets you "The Quicker Man."
The game utilizes a modified and upgraded Killzone: Shadow Fall engine, called Decima.
"Until Dawn" is said three times throughout the game: by the ranger in Chapter 6, by Emily – if she survived the mines – in Chapter 8, and by Sam in Chapter 8.
In the Japanese version of the game, most of the deaths are censored with black screens. Additionally, the credits feature the deceased characters' introduction screens instead of their death scenes.
Despite stating in the behind-the-scene video A Thousand Pages that the script consists of a thousand pages, screenwriters Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick have said they originally wrote 10,000 pages of dialogue, but only 1,000 pages were used in the final script.^[23]
- The script won a Guinness World Record for its 1,000 final pages.^[24]
- Later, in a 2020 interview with Reznick and Fessenden, Graham Reznick clarified that the report of the script being 10,000 pages was a hyperbolic estimate. The reason for the number of pages being that high was that it comprehended all the previous PS3 and PS4 iterations. He then stated that the PS3 script was 3000-6000 pages ("closer to 6000 pages depending on how you format"), and the PS4 script was 2000-4000 pages, which were then rounded up to the collective highest possible estimate.^[25]
  - In an interview shortly before the 10 year anniversary of Until Dawn, Reznick stated that the PS3 script was 5000-7000 pages, while the PS4 script was 3000-4000 pages.^[26]
The behind-the-scenes video The Science of Fear shows that, in order to gauge the effectiveness of the terror, horror and gore of the game, they had people play-test the game in the dark and had special galvanic response sensors hooked up to measure the electrical conductivity across their skin and thus judge their amount of fear and anxiety.
Until Dawn is referenced several times in its spiritual successor The Quarry:
- Emma praising Abigail's driving with the phrase “Nice steering, Tex” is a reference to Sam praising Chris's shooting with the phrase “Nice shooting, Tex”.
- Dylan's line upon finding the bear trap “something like that can really take your hands off” is a reference to Mike possibly losing his fingers in the bear trap at the Sanatorium.
- Dylan and Ryan talk about having a class in climbing, which is a referencing Chris' calling gym a "climbing class."
- Kaitlyn and Dylan's possible dialogue about being isolated at the ski lodge due to a broken cable car is a reference to the overall setting of Blackwood Mountain and the group being trapped on it due to Josh taking the keys to the cable car.
  - Additionally, Until Dawn's ending in the PlayStation 3 Beta involved survivors making it to a cable car which could potentially jam halfway down the line and leave the characters to starve.
    - Kaitlyn's phrase “when the food runs out, you only got each other” also references the Wendigos and turning into them through cannibalism.
- Grace and Anton mention the Wendigos in one episode of their podcast "Bizarre Yet Bonafide."
  - Grace's phrase “It was just a prank, Anton” is a reference to Emily's phrase “It was just a prank, Han.”