The title of this piece hurt to write. One of the greatest weekends of my life was when my best friend from college came to my parent’s house for the weekend to hang out. We swung by a local game shop and picked up the new release we were excited for: Until Dawn. After grabbing some Hot And Ready pizzas from Little Ceasers, and a couple of twelve packs, we went back to my place and settled in for an exciting weekend. We must have played Until Dawn three or four times; letting characters die in one run, live the next, etc.

A few years later, Supermassive Games would develop Hidden Agenda, which doesn’t get the love it deserves. Hidden Agenda, and Larry Fessenden, solidified my love for Supermassive Games. I ate up every Dark Pictures Anthology game that would come out in the following years, and The Quarry was my favorite game of 2022. In my eyes, I could never NOT enjoy a Supermassive game. (Also I was an avid Dead by Daylight player years ago, with around 300 hours logged.) When I learned that Graham Reznick (Until Dawn, The Quarry) wrote a game that Supermassive Games developed that happened to take place within the Dead by Daylight universe, I was excited. After eight hours (we’ll touch on that) I can only ask, what went wrong?

The Casting of Frank Stone takes us on an adventure through three different decades, following two groups of people. In the 80s we follow Chris Gordon (Rebecca LaChance), Linda Castle (Lucy Griffiths), Jaime Rivera (Andrew Wheildon-Dennis), Robert Green (Idris Debrand), and Bonnie Rivera (Díana Bermudez) as they attempt to film a horror movie in an abandoned steel mill. Robert’s father, Sam Green (Tobi Bakare), regularly patrols this Cedar Steel Mill due to an incident with a baby in the furnace room who was set to be killed at the hands of Frank Stone (Miles Ley). The second group we follow, set in the present, is comprised of Madi Rivera-Platt (Díana Bermudez), Linda Castle, and Bruno “Stan” Stanford III (Andrew Krueger). These three are brought to a mansion owned by Augustine Lieber (Hannah Morrish) for reasons that will become apparent all too soon. How do these two stories all come together?

You’ll have to play to find out.

If you are familiar with Supermassive games, then you’re familiar with their gameplay style. Multiple dialogue options affect relationships, which can dictate how later situations are handled; one missed quick-time event can take a character out of the story for good; collectibles scatter the map revealing deeper elements to the story; you get the drift.

The Casting of Frank Stone has every element of a Supermassive game, but it fails to hit the mark. Storywise, Frank Stone barely scratches the surface of anything resembling intriguing. Graham Reznick has proven his storytelling abilities over the years, from his video game writing, to Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear, to his compelling show Deadwax. The story of Frank Stone feels empty for the overwhelming majority of the game and then does a complete U-turn and bombards with too much information. Reznick’s script focuses heavily on building the unique ambiance of a world that exists within the Dead by Daylight world before realizing it should try and tell an intriguing story of its own. That being said, the final moment of the game, before the post-credit scene, gave me chills. Without revealing too much, the game’s final scene makes all of the frustration and hassle worth the playtime.

Let’s discuss the playtime. A simple Google search will show an approximate playtime of six hours, which is longer than most of the games in the Dark Pictures Anthology. So why did it take eight hours for me to play this game? The answer unfortunately lies in the overwhelming amount of game-crashing, soft-locking, rage-inducing bugs. Nine different times I would have a character walk into me, or I would try and pass another character, and I would *somehow* clip into the other character, rendering movement impossible. My PlayStation 5 froze multiple times during various scenes, which forced many unsafe PlayStation shutdowns.

The worst time this happened was during the final chapter. You’re faced with the decision to either shoot one character or Frank Stone. When I made my decision, my game froze. Once the game was loaded back up, I was thrust into the game moments after my decision. That’s when I realized the game was moving at, what seemed like, .0001 times speed. At first, I thought this was a creative decision. After two minutes passed I realized it was not. I was stuck in a single scene of the game as it moved in mega-slow motion for over half an hour. This is just simply unacceptable. Once the scene was over, it went back to regular speed, but I had enough at that point. While I played through to the end, it was at great personal protest.

Why is every game nowadays released unfinished or full of bugs? If you expect people to pay 40 to 80 dollars for a triple-A gaming experience, it should be a triple-A gaming experience. Extensive game testing should have brought some of the bugs I experienced to light. Gamers would happily wait an extra week or two (hell, or three) if it meant we were getting a top-of-the-line experience. A bug or two is fine. Multiple experience-halting bugs that hurt the gameplay is sad. Over the past few years, we’ve learned how under-the-gun developers are. Some are forced to work insanely ridiculous hours to produce content at levels we’ve never seen before. (I’m referring to devs as a whole and not Supermassive.) One thing I appreciate about Supermassive is how I’ve never had an issue like this with any of their games before, and that’s why it hurts so much to write this.

If there’s anything I have learned from playing modern triple-A games is to expect the worst. It’s what we’ve become conditioned to expect.

As stated earlier, I have quite a few hours in Dead by Daylight and still watch tons of Dead by Daylight content. Even with the amount of information I know about the Dead by Daylight universe, I still felt left out. Whenever I read a note or saw what I knew was supposed to be an easter egg, I just knew there was a Dead by Daylight reference going over my head. It’s clear the references weren’t meant for people like me, but I still couldn’t help but feel left out. That’s not a negative critique of the game, per se, only how I felt.

Acting-wise, it’s clear who is a voice actor and who is a screen actor. People like Rebecca LaChance, Díana Bermudez, and Andrew Wheildon-Dennis have extensive voice acting credits and it shows. They are clearly the [acting] highlights of The Casting of Frank Stone. Everyone else feels like they’re reading from a script they were handed an hour before they went into the booth. Until Dawn was a diamond amongst dung, it’s one of the few times screen actors expertly transitioned to voice actors for their performance. The decision to not have a cast full of experienced voice actors ultimately hurt the game’s number one vehicle for storytelling.

The Casting of Frank Stone ended up being an unfortunate experience for someone who is a diehard Supermassive Games fan. It’s far from the worst game of the year, but there’s no way it could crack my top 10 this year. I think I would enjoy more Supermassive/Behaviour Interactive games within the Dead by Daylight universe as there are so many fun angles they can take. And with the number of licensed characters Behaviour has, who knows which horror icons we could get in the style of a Supermassive game! I hope that Frank Stone is just a stumble into what could be a great new direction for Dead by Daylight and Supermassive. That said, I’m still looking forward to purchasing The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020 day one.

Look, I like my complex horror. I like the monster as a rich, thematic entity, rife with allegorical significance. I like the tension of an expertly crafted and executed scare, with filmmaking that blows my mind. But sometimes…you just want to blow monsters apart and feel like an Ash Williams-style badass with a boomstick.

There are many asymmetric horror multiplayer games out there now (some would say too many, but that’s for another article), and tons of new survival horror games. But I felt that our July theme, Gorror, was the perfect time to highlight those gruesome games that are just fun for fun’s sake, and maybe haven’t gotten as much publicity as your Dead By Daylight’s or Poppy’s Playtime’s. So, today’s article is just that: we’re covering five gruesome action horror games you didn’t know you needed to play, and where to get them.

5 Hidden Horror Gems in Gaming You Should Try

MOTHER RUSSIA BLEEDS

This one is the oldest game on our list, and certainly the one coming from the most pedigree. Published by indie darling Devolver Digital, Mother Russia Bleeds was the closest we ever got to a third Hotline Miami game. However, this one was even more horror-oriented despite being a sidescrolling beat em up in the vein of Final Fight. But it never really got the explosion in popularity its predecessor did, probably because it’s on the shorter end of things with an estimated playtime of 4 hours, and is kind of way nastier.

It follows a group of Russian street fighters who are kidnapped and used as human test subjects for a line of experimental drugs called Nekro. What does Nekro do? Well, it can bring its users back from the dead, grant them superhuman strength and pain tolerance, cause hallucinations and madness, and kill the user (or victim) in the most horrendous ways possible. The game is a series of vicious grindhouse setpieces with unrelenting and increasingly creative forms of violence that doesn’t shy away from the insane. The gameplay loop isn’t half bad either.

It has a pretty good singleplayer experience, but it’s a beat em up, so unsurprisingly it’s the kind of game that is best played with friends. Which I’m sure is leading to the question, “Luis, time is money. Do you seriously think I can convince three friends to sink $15 each into a 4-hour-long beat ’em up?” To which I say, of course not! You’re going to spend $12 between all of you, because this game frequently goes on sale on GOG.com for $3. You can also find it on Steam if that’s your preferred platform.

FORGIVE ME FATHER

With the flow of time as unforgiving to our memories as the Great Old Ones are to mankind, it’s easy to lose track of all the games that came out during the past few years. Forgive Me Father released in 2021 to acclaim for its bevy of nasty, weird weapons, and even stranger enemies; it’s a heavily Lovecraft-inspired boomer shooter, and when it comes to its creatures and level design, there are plenty of unique eldritch horrors to blast apart in different dark locales.

The gameplay is very satisfying, and the enemies have fun gimmicks beyond their great designs. With zombies that replace their own blown-off heads, explosive barrel mimics, and teleporting abyssal demons, the game always keeps you on the backfoot remembering their patterns and tactics as you scramble for more ammo and build up Madness. The upgrade system also adds quite a bit of replayability with different weapons being morphed by your continued presence in the festering corruption of Pestisville. The comic book art style all of this is drawn in reminds you of the best of Mike Mignola’s work on B.P.R.D. and earlier Hellboy comics, with a dash of Darkest Dungeon for the more roguelike inclined of us. It’s a game I feel I was bound to fall in love with, and I think you will too.

You can find Forgive Me Father and its sequel on Steam, but you can also find it on GOG.com. At the time of writing this, it was 50% off for 10 bucks on GOG, and those deals happen pretty regularly, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.

SKER: RITUAL

Anybody who grew up whittling away whole weekends on Call of Duty: Zombies trying to get to round 100 or just unlocking those crazy intricate easter eggs will know, the franchise has changed quite a bit. The latest iterations have left simplicity at the door, and it’s far and away from the experience it used to be. For those who need the occasional nostalgia with their games of gunning down zombie hordes, Sker: Ritual is the answer.

Developed by Wales Interactive, the studio is mostly known for dramatic visual novels that read more like movies. Sker: Ritual is incredibly not that, since it’s pretty opaquely a spiritual successor to the Zombies series with everything that would entail: a focus on great feeling weapons, combat perks, and unique enemy rounds to complement the swarms of undead you’re mowing to bits with your weapons. The game also has those signature easter eggs you missed, but a whole new and much easier-to-follow story than what resulted from CoD’s expansive lore. (Remember when it was just about hell hounds and ghosts stuck in obelisks on the moon?)

The game has taken a small but lively community of fans captive, and they will give you plenty of company to play alongside as you go through story missions across 4 different fleshed-out maps. There’s a free demo of Sker: Ritual, which you can check out before you buy. You can find the full version on Steam here.

MORTAL SIN

Mortal Sin was making the rounds earlier this year among content creators and streamers, and its appeal is clear to see. It’s a straightforward hack-and-slash first-person combat game where you play as a medieval knight, crawling through procedurally generated dungeons, replacing constantly eroding ancient gear, and navigating dark domains. And if the knight in dusty armor experience doesn’t suit what you’re looking for, there’s a whopping 15 different classes to unlock so you can get ripped apart by demonic forces just how you’d like (seriously, try the Monk with high-speed items and tell me that doesn’t feel sick as hell.)

It’s a roguelike with not a whole bunch of lore, but the lack of story doesn’t bother me because it more than makes up for it in replayability, and its unique visuals. Fans of games like Killer 7 or Cruelty Squad will be used to the very high contrast look of the levels, and personally I think the aesthetic distinction is worth the cost of having to get used to the off-kilter color schemes.

The gameplay reminds me a bit of what a singleplayer Vermintide might look like, but with more depth to its combat and equipment system, and more overt horror. The combo strings you can pull off will take practice, but the learning curve is perfect, and it feels unbelievably good when you find gear that synergizes with your preferred playstyle and character class. This one is like jamming through a metal album cover, so put on some Slayer or Bolt Thrower to complement it and try your hand at this one.  

You can purchase Mortal Sin through Steam here.

WROUGHT FLESH

The premise alone should be enough to hook you immediately: Wrought Flesh is a biopunk first-person shooter game where you play as an assassin for a cult living on a space station, sent to a half-dead planet to hunt down your target. You’ll encounter bizarre creatures, enemies, and locals during your playthrough.

But you aren’t just any religious hitman: you’re a Frankenstein’s monster made of your dead ancestors’ body parts, and you’re really good at using the guts you find to enhance your already impressive abilities. Yes, you do get to rip out your enemy’s organs and put them inside yourself, replete with all the stat bonuses and cool abilities that entails. Or should I say, entrails?

Okay, sorry, bad pun.

Wrought Flesh was designed by Miziziziz, which eagle-eyed readers will recognize as the one-man game dev powerhouse behind Endoparasitic. Truth be told, this is the game that made me want to write this article, because it’s just so out there and puts a fresh spin on the past few years of movement focused shooters in a way nothing else really has. It’s got depth without being overly crunchy, and style without detracting from its substance. Beyond that, it has an endgame enemy that truly makes my skin crawl, but you’ll have to experience that genuinely terrifying part of the game yourself. You’ll have to play it for yourself to discover what the hype is all about.

You can buy Wrought Flesh on Steam here, and on Itch.io here.

Happy gaming horror fans! And for more articles on everything horror games, movies, television and more, stay tuned to Horror Press on Twitter and Instagram!