The Casting of Frank Stone Review

Getting a new Supermassive horror game has become a yearly tradition at this point, and quite frankly it’s something I consistently look forward to. Over the past 5 or so years, Supermassive have stolen the spotlight when it comes to narrative, choice-driven games. When there was radio silence on when the next entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology would be releasing, I thought this year would be the first in a long time that we didn’t get a new horror game from the team to enjoy around the October period. But then with the reveal of The Casting of Frank Stone, my worries were put to rest. This game utilises the same framework that we’ve become familiar with from Supermassive’s other recent titles but further builds upon it to provide an experience that does things with it’s narrative that we haven’t seen from this developer in the past and a gameplay experience that looks and feels better than ever. 

The Casting of Frank Stone is a narrative adventure game where your actions and decisions shape the way the story plays out and comes with a load of drastically different outcomes, where supposedly no one is safe and anyone is capable of living or dying by the end. It’s a structure you’ll be quite familiar with if you’ve played any of Supermassive’s previous titles such as Until Dawn, The Quarry or any of the Dark Pictures Anthology games. Although, where those other games offer up stories that act as homages to some classic horror stories and provide a a core premise that can be ascertained by watching the trailers or reading the plot points on the box, The Casting of Frank Stone does some really different things with it’s narrative and it’s surprise hasn’t been the forefront of any trailers yet. So if you can, go in as blind as possible so it’s not spoiled for you. It’s also for that reason that I’m not going to go into specific details on the story structure within this review.

The game takes place within the town of Cedar Hills, Oregon and centres on a group of amateur film makers attempting to make a horror movie with a climax that takes place within an abandoned steel mil that many years prior was the base of operations of a serial killer in the town. This killer was dispatched at the time after causing a string of murders, but it becomes clear just how much his legacy lives on and how his actions have continued to affect multiple generations and raises questions regarding who may have really been pulling the strings behind the scenes. It’s a story filled with twists and turns, and honestly may be my favourite when it comes to Supermassive’s catalogue just because of how different it is and how it’s far more than it initially seems after getting through the early hours. 

And for those that may not know, this game also takes place within the Dead By Daylight (DbD) universe. Now going in, I had little knowledge of the source series and have never played it myself. But The Casting of Frank Stone ties in well, without relying on it to be interesting or trying to appeal to only DbD fans. Best of all, it can be completely enjoyed even if you’ve never touched DbD like myself, but there are a ton of references to DbD as well as Easter Eggs that I’m sure existing fans will appreciate. And after playing through this game, it’s worldbuilding and setting has actually got me interested in checking out DbD and it’s already driven me to start going down lore article rabbit holes and appreciating the game’s tie ins even more. So I call that a win in my books.

When it comes to the moment to moment gameplay, it’s once again something that’s very familiar to the aforementioned games from Supermassive. They know what they do well and they continue to hone it. Outside of the lengthy cinematic cutscenes and branching narrative, the game has you taking control of a member of the party, with the perspective often switching up chapter by chapter as you walk around, discover clues, items of interest and collectibles and solve environmental puzzles to progress to the next story beat and progress through the chapters. The game rewards those that take the time to explore the environment and actively look for where things could be hiding. There are bits of lore, collectibles to find that directly reference DbD characters and inventory items that can be stored, that at the time seem strange of useless but can come in handy during later optional puzzles or provide different options when it comes to decisions that can be made that wouldn’t have been available if you didn’t have that item or piece of information. The puzzle sections themselves reminded me of the kind of environmental puzzles that often feature in the classic Resident Evil titles. And with a really PT-esque looping changing hallway sequence, it’s clear that the team have no issues paying homage to some of the best titles in the genre and was something I loved to see.

The Casting of Frank Stone also sees the return of a much loved feature from the Dark Pictures games, where you’re able to play the game locally with other people by using the game’s local co-op ‘pass the controller’ system. But it is just a feature, you can absolutely play the game completely solo and have a great time too.

An addition that is new though is the Cutting Room Floor. This feature provides you the ability to see a branching map that documents your journey through the game, each of the choices you made as well as the percentage of players that took which decision at each part. It also gives you a visual look at how many possible ways a scene could have branched out. But where it’s most powerful is it also allows you to go back to a previously made decision and pick up the game from that point and make different choices so that you can see the benefits and consequences of making other decisions. The Cutting Room Floor is accessed from the main menu and is available right from the beginning of the game if you pick up the Deluxe Edition of the game, it is otherwise unlocked when you complete the story the first time.

The gripes I had with the game are pretty minor for the most part as I had a really enjoyable experience with these characters, the twists and how most of my decisions played out. But one big thing I noticed when playing was that the game could have been much scarier. I feel liked they’ve potentially over corrected since the near constant jumps in The Devil in Me to now be pretty tame with the horror. The atmosphere is still certainly creepy, and the game’s not completely gotten rid of sudden shocks, but they’ve been noticeably pulled back in favour of focussing more heavily this time around on a more complex storyline. If I was to make comparisons to other media for example, where The Devil In Me feels more like Saw, this game is closer to feeling like Stranger Things. I did also run into some audio balancing issues and a couple of instances where the other npcs would block me inside a room or prevent me from getting to an objective point, requiring a reload of my most recent save to resolve, but these will hopefully be patched up by launch.

Overall, The Casting of Frank Stone is a game that I have no issues recommending to fans of horror, and especially to people that like Supermassive’s game structure or the Dead by Daylight series. I loved that this game tried new things with its narrative and that it offered interesting twists and turns along the way that kept me guessing and speculating on what would happen next. The switch to Unreal 5 helps the game look great, the colours seem balanced a lot better compared to previous games and the character models and facial animations are leagues above some other recent titles I’ve been playing. We already know now that the next entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Directive 8020 will be coming next year, and after playing through this game, I’m so excited to see what Supermassive can deliver in a space setting.

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