Big things are coming to Dead by Daylight, as Behaviour Interactive have marked the game’s 10th anniversary with a big reveal stream to talk about the game’s future. There’s more than just more collaborations (though there’s plenty of those on the way), but also gameplay revamps and graphical overhauls that will rejuvenate the decade-old game.
In the immediate future, we have the previously announced addition of Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise entering The Fog on 16th June, but since he will be a killer-only addition, Behaviour has also worked to reveal a new original survivor. Shane Wiigwaas will be the game’s first Indigenous survivor when he joins the game on 25th June in the Dead by Daylight: The Life Road chapter. Shane is a lawyer from the Anishinaabe community searching for answers to a miscarriage of justice that led to hie cousins being wrongly convicted after a mysterious disappearance.
Further afield, there will the community collab Chorus of Sin chapter in August, Art the Clown from Terrifier in November this year, and 2027 will see a chapter based on The Casting of Frank Stone.
Another new map and original realm will arrive in the shape of the shopping mall, which will combine shopping malls and the zeitgeist horror of liminal spaces. This will look to bring more lore to original characters, with Dwight in particular, and will launch in December.
But the real changes for the game will come with a sweeping visual overhaul that is set to release in 2027. This brings new character models that allow for greater animations, more realistic facial animations and more – new voice lines are also being recorded for these original characters. Maps and environments are also being overhauled, bringing enhanced lighting, sharing, textures and even a dynamic weather system that will ramp up the atmosphere when its raining or storming.
Some new game modes are also on the way, though these are still early in development. A 1v1 experience will pit a single survivor against a single killer, while a zombies mode will have survivors trying to find a cure for the undead while a killer tries to stop them.
Most exciting for the dedicated community is the promise of fully opening up sandboxed modding. This will include a suite of tools to create new maps, modes and more for the horror game.
And we’ll round things out with the cluster of IPs and cosmetics, with Ice Nine Kills, Silent Hill, Diablo IV and even Scooby Doo set to appear in Dead by Daylight cosmetics in the coming year.