On August 26, 2015, Game Developer Supermassive Games along with publisher Sony Computer Entertainment, released their newest title: Until Dawn. Until Dawn is a PlayStation 4 Exclusive Interactive Survival Horror game which introduced a mechanic known as the Butterfly Effect, the name and concept inspired from the IRL term with the same name, meaning every action you take influences the future. To simulate this, the game allows you to make decisions at certain points in the game by choosing from two options. Each of those options, along with occasional quick-time events, influences the choices and situations you are presented later in the game, to around two hundred different options to choose and influence your game, allowing you to save or kill all or none of the eight characters.

The story of the game is another factor that makes the experience one of a kind. Until Dawn’s story is a spoof of circa 1980’s teen horror/slasher films. With a cast of teenage characters on a winter vacation to a secluded snowy mountain cabin and a nearby Sanatorium on the one year anniversary of Josh’s-the owner of the cabin- two sisters disappeared mysteriously into the snowy night, titles such as “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween,” as well as “The Evil Dead” are immediately brought to mind. Classic themes from such films are present here as well: isolation, creepy danger music, sexually driven couples, and cheap jump scares are all present and abundant.

Your task through your play-through, as you switch back and forth between the eight friends, is to explore and investigate the strange happenings and sights as you try to survive the night and uncover the mystery of Josh’s sisters’ disappearance. Between chapters of dark snowy horror, scenes of a first-person-view interview with a man who seems to be a psychiatrist asks you a number of questions with options to choose from, such as your fears, as well as your favorite and least favorite of the characters you play as throughout the game.

These choices, just like the other Butterfly Effect choices in the game, influence future events in the game, ranging from character behavior, deaths, information learned, as well as moments of horror added to your journey. This journey through dark forests, mines, mountainside cliffs, and the dark abandoned hallways of the old Sanatorium, will attempt to frighten you at every turn, all while presenting you with lore and backstory scattered around, revealing a dark history of the place.

But how effective of a horror game or even a next-gen console game is “Until Dawn” really? The answer is very! I was able to finish the game once within a few days of extended play. In this one play-through, I had not even stretched the surface of what this game has to offer. It is most definitely a game with a great replay value which had me on the edge of my seat with the lights turned off and the volume up. The short play-through time offers you to explore all that the game has to offer in an amount of time that does not at all feel drawn out or boring for a moment. Your characters’ movement is rather slow, no more than a swift walk, adding a feeling of hopelessness to the multitude of chase scenes and upping the horror factor overall.

Graphically, the game is top notch, and well within the standards Sony set for its new console. The game was well received by other critics, gaining an average of 80% from various major game reviewers, finding the environments and “creepiness” excellent, but calling the second half of the game “silly” and “unfocused” as well as a few dislikes of certain characters. Overall though, this game has surpassed my expectations on multiple levels and was a generally enjoyable experience. My score: 9/10.