Overview
Until Dawn is a remake of Supermassive Games' 2015 interactive horror classic, rebuilt from the ground up by Ballistic Moon for PS5 and PC. The original earned a devoted following for treating player choice as its core mechanic, and this version preserves that foundation while adding overhauled visuals, new areas, and a reworked prologue that gives the story more room to breathe before the terror sets in.
The premise is simple and effective: eight friends return to the mountain lodge where two of their group disappeared exactly a year before. What starts as a tense reunion spirals into something far worse, and the game never lets players forget that every character on screen can die permanently based on the decisions made throughout the night.
Gameplay and mechanics
Until Dawn plays like a playable slasher film. Players move between characters, explore environments, and face quick-time events and split-second choices that branch the story in meaningful ways. The remake introduces updated camera controls that give players more freedom to look around scenes, moving away from the fixed cinematic angles of the original toward something that feels more grounded.
Key features in the remake include:
- Overhauled visuals and lighting
- New collectables and hidden interactions
- Reworked prologue sequence
- New explorable areas
- Stay Calm mechanic for tense moments
The new Stay Calm mechanic adds a layer of physical tension to danger sequences. When a threat is close, players must keep the controller steady, turning the DualSense into a literal measure of composure. It sounds gimmicky, but it works surprisingly well at making scripted moments feel genuinely stressful.
What makes the choices actually matter?
The butterfly effect system tracks every decision, small and large, and surfaces consequences later in ways that can feel genuinely surprising. A character who finds a weapon early might survive a situation that kills another playthrough's version of the same scene. The game tracks these ripples carefully, which means a second or third run through the story reveals how many outcomes were quietly shaped by choices that seemed minor at the time.
Replayability is one of Until Dawn's strongest arguments. With a relatively short runtime of around eight to ten hours per playthrough, the game rewards multiple runs. Seeing every possible outcome, saving every character, or deliberately trying to get the entire cast killed are all legitimate ways to engage with the experience.
World and setting
Blackwood Mountain is the kind of horror setting that does a lot of work on its own. The lodge, the sanatorium ruins, the mine shafts beneath the snow, all of it feels designed to make players uncomfortable before anything actually happens. The remake's visual overhaul makes the most of this, with improved lighting that turns the constant snowfall and deep shadows into something genuinely atmospheric rather than just a backdrop.
The tone leans into classic slasher tropes without being cynical about them. The characters fit recognizable archetypes, but the writing gives them enough texture that their survival or death carries weight. The horror escalates from psychological tension to something much more visceral, and the pacing holds up across the full runtime.
Technical achievement
The PS5 version takes advantage of the DualSense controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers throughout, adding physical texture to everything from walking through snow to the Stay Calm sequences. The game also runs with PS5 Pro enhancements for players on that hardware. On PC, the release lands on both Steam and Epic Games Store, giving the game wider reach than the PlayStation-exclusive original ever had. Rated M for Mature by the ESRB, the game carries content warnings for blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes, and strong language, which should surprise no one familiar with the source material.