Dead by Daylight

Dead by Daylight

A generator rattles somewhere in the fog, the Killer's Terror Radius creeps closer, and half your team has already scattered. Dead by Daylight stretches that single moment into a full match: one side hunts, the other repairs and runs.

Everything is played online against other people, and nothing locks an account to one role. The hunter of one Trial can be a hunted Survivor in the next.

Top 3 Reasons to Play

1. Two roles that play like two different games - Chasing and hiding reward opposite instincts. Every Killer carries a signature power: the Nurse blinks through walls, the Huntress throws hatchets from a distance, and each new Chapter adds another idea of what a monster can do. Survivors get no such weapon. Their edge is timing and teamwork, from patching up an injured ally to pulling the Killer's attention somewhere else.
2. Maps that never settle into a routine - Each Realm holds one or more maps, and their layouts change every time a Trial starts. Chase routes have to be read on the spot rather than recalled from an earlier match.
3. 2v8, a mode that rewrites the rules - 2v8 is a recurring limited-time mode, first offered on 25 July 2024. Two Killers pursue eight Survivors across enlarged versions of regular maps, and the usual loadout gives way to Classes with their own Skills.

Story and Lore

Behind every Trial stands the Entity, a being that feeds on fear and pain. It takes people from many worlds and drops them into pocket Realms assembled from the memories of earlier victims, then keeps them cycling through Trials so their strongest emotions can fuel its slow effort to swallow another world.

Not everyone realises the loop is a loop. Some Survivors have worked out that they are trapped; others relive the horror after every death as if it were new. Those whose capacity to feel runs dry are discarded into the Void as empty shells.

Individual stories reach players through the Archives, a system built around the Observer, who uses a device called the Auris to probe the Fog and pull out memories stored there.

• Each Tome carries a set of Challenges completed during ranked Trials; finishing certain ones adds lore entries for selected characters.
• A new Rift arrives with every Tome, packed with time-limited cosmetic rewards, many tied to that Tome's story or to seasonal events.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Survivors need to finish five of the seven generators scattered around the map. A lone Survivor takes 90 seconds per generator, and Skill Checks pop up along the way: a miss costs progress and can give away your position. Once the fifth generator runs, two exit gates receive power, and holding the lever to open one takes 20 seconds. That stretch is the Killer's best chance for an ambush.

The Killer's job is to catch people and hang them on hooks. The first hooking leaves a Survivor able to wait for a rescue or attempt to unhook themselves. After the second, the Entity manifests and the Survivor fights to stay alive through further Skill Checks. A third hooking ends in sacrifice.

Outside the Trials, Bloodpoints collected in a match feed the Bloodweb, a web of nodes unique to each character. Working through it buys items, add-ons, offerings and perks, and completing a web levels the character up.

Perks form the deepest customisation layer. A loadout holds four, each perk has three tiers, and every character arrives with three of their own that other characters on the same side can learn later, either through prestige or via the Shrine of Secrets. The Shrine rotates weekly with four perks, two for each side, priced in Iridescent Shards.

Beyond perks, a loadout can also include:

• An item for Survivors, such as a Med-Kit, Flashlight, Toolbox or Key.
• Add-ons for Killers, which tweak how a power behaves.
• Offerings, small gifts to the Entity that tilt a Trial before it begins, for instance by boosting Bloodpoint gains.

Characters and Factions

The cast splits into Survivors and the Killers who hunt them. Inside each camp, characters are either original creations or licensed from other properties.

Three Killers shipped with the game itself: the Trapper and his bear traps, the Wraith and his bell, and the Hillbilly with a chainsaw. The Nurse joined in August 2016, and the Legion later brought a Killer made up of four people. On the Survivor side, the roster opens with Dwight Fairfield, Meg Thomas, Claudette Morel and Jake Park.

Licensed characters make up the other half of the cast:

• Slasher cinema: Ghost Face, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger as The Nightmare, Chucky as The Good Guy and Jason Voorhees as The Slasher.
• Resident Evil: two Chapters brought Nemesis and Wesker (The Mastermind) as Killers, with Jill Valentine, Leon Scott Kennedy, Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers among the Survivors.
• Stranger Things: Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington and the Demogorgon came first, followed by Henry Creel as The First.
• Heroes from other worlds: Lara Croft, Trevor Belmont of Castlevania, Alan Wake, Nicolas Cage as himself, and Rick Grimes and Michonne from The Walking Dead.
• Aliens and animatronics: the Xenomorph arrives with Ellen Ripley, while Five Nights at Freddy's contributes Springtrap as The Animatronic with no Survivor attached.

Licences also expire. Hellraiser's Chapter left the stores on 4 April 2025, and the Halloween Chapter followed on 19 January 2026; players who already owned Michael Myers and Laurie Strode kept them, while the Haddonfield map dropped out of the pool.

Newer additions include Jason Voorhees as The Slasher, released on 16 June 2026, and The Judgment, who arrived with the Chorus of Sin Chapter on 25 August 2026.

Editions

The Standard Edition is the base game with nothing bundled in. Larger editions layer Chapters on top of it:

• Gold Edition: adds the Maddening Darkness, Old Wounds and Macabre Tales packs plus 23 outfits for the included characters. Steam's listing counts 11 original Killers and 12 original Survivors, and no licensed Chapters are part of it.
• 10th Anniversary Edition (16 June 2026): base game plus the Hour of the Witch, Ghost Face, Cursed Legacy, Chains of Hate, All Things Wicked and Forged in Fog Chapters.
• Themed bundles: Steam also lists editions that pair the base game with a single licence, such as the Five Nights at Freddy's Edition and the Stranger Things Complete Edition.

Chapters and packs can also be bought individually, which makes an edition a shortcut rather than a requirement.