The Casting of Frank Stone

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The Casting of Frank Stone takes the universe of Dead by Daylight (with original story) and turns it into the interactive storytelling style that I know and love from Supermassive Games. There are two versions of the game, standard (£32.99) and deluxe (£39.99). The deluxe version includes instant access to the “Cutting Room Floor” and some additional outfits.

Honestly, I prefer playing the killer myself.

A lone man is sitting in his work shop. A light beams down on him to add more of a menacing visual. The whole shot is covered with a black and white filter. — Waiting for the game to begin.

Now, I’m not such a fan of the actual gameplay style of Dead by Daylight, but I enjoy the lore it has. That’s why I was happy to see The Casting of Frank Stone in this kind of gameplay style. I have played a good few of Supermassive Games previous titles, such as Until Dawn, Dark Pictures series and The Quarry. All fantastic games in my opinion. I’m really hoping the The Casting of Frank Stone might lead to the killers from Dead by Daylight getting a similar gameplay and story treatment.

Gameplay

In The Casting of Frank Stone, we play as five characters over three different time periods, two of which are important. An old movie is the focus of the overarching story and it explores the connection between our five protagonists and the film. If you’re not familiar with the Supermassive Games style of interactive gameplay, it’s a similar style as the Telltale games.

A shot of two characters about to have a conversation. One of them is sat down while the other has their back to the camera. — That does not look comfy

The Casting of Frank Stone has players exploring areas looking for interactive items or collectables and, during cut scenes, perform button prompts. Just like their other titles, the overall goal is to keep everyone alive in the end. But beware as the choices you make can really mess up a play through. Some of these ways you can mess up come in a new but familiar mechanic i.e. when trying to fix a generator. There are usually two options when making choices, with each displaying the intent and dialogue. A third option sometimes will reveal itself once you find a particular bit of information, but this was rare for me.

A gif of me avoiding some falling object by performing a quick time event. Once done the character dodges successfully and draws a firearm. — This QTE is the same in Dead by Daylight

The game is playable via couch co-op, with each person controlling one or multiple characters. Since I mainly prefer to play solo, I didn’t try this feature. So if you’ve tried it, let me know in the comments below what you thought of it.

Graphics & Audio

There are plenty of things that The Casting of Frank Stone does well, and some which occasionally subtract from that good. The ambient music as you explore is eerie and builds some suspense. Overall it sounds great. However, when things often stayed peaceful for too long, the music began feeling needlessly creepy.

Lighting is brilliantly done and flashlights are actually useful. The environments designs are great and the monster design is just *chef’s kiss*, when you do see him.

a mini-game which will be familiar to those who have played Dead by Daylight. — Who needs a mechanic?

Sadly, the visual bugs and character model animations and faces subtracted from the experience. Some faces gave me uncanny valley vibes, especially Chris. Both facial and character model movements looked stiff and awkward. There were also quite a few visual bugs, such as an object sliding out of a character’s hand while they held it. The most glaring visual bug happened when a character died. Their head model would become completely invisible besides their eyes and teeth. Not the kind of creepy I think Supermassive Games were going for.

Longevity

There are fourteen chapters in The Casting of Frank Stone and many choices for the player to make. It took me around seven and half hours in one sitting to finish the game. Of course there are multiple endings and various collectables to gather, with some of them being pretty cool fan service to Dead by Daylight. Trying to complete all the endings and collect everything does add some length to the game.

one of a few collectables found in the game. This one in particular is the killer found in Dead by Daylight called The Huntress. — Huh, neat.

Final Thoughts

Compared to other games, Supermassive Games made The Casting of Frank Stone is surprisingly light on gameplay and heavily disappointing on delivering a frightful story. I know these games aren’t usually gameplay heavy, but this nearly made it feel like a seven hour long movie.

The game started strong, but once I had reached chapter seven, I was disappointed. It felt as though nothing interesting had really happened. I was also upset to find out that from chapter two all the way to chapter thirteen, nothing major story-wise had happened. What I mean by this, is there is no real character development from any of our protagonists. Nor any real times of danger from the main villain until near the last two chapters. The game had me thinking the whole time, where the hell is Frank?

I found the dialogue from the characters to be cringy, random and sometimes added nothing to the plot. I enjoyed Officer Green and Robert as characters as brief as they were.

The whole game feels like filler and at lacks actual suspense. If you’re looking for a good horror game, I’d either pick up the currently released, Until Dawn (or wait for its remaster) or play The Quarry.

Sadly, I have to award The Casting of Frank Stone the Thumb Culture Bronze Award.

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

About Author

Kyle McGrath

I’ve enjoyed video games for as long as I remember and I don’t think there isn’t a game I wouldn’t play. For reviews, I try my best to make them simple and easy to understand. With so many games released daily, I attempt to play them all.

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