The Casting of Frank Stone™

[b]The Casting of Frank Stone[/b] When someone mentions Supermassive Games, I immediately think of great memories and some fantastic games such as Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology (well, except for The Devil in Me, which wasn't exactly their strongest title), and The Quarry. All of these games shared two things: horror and engaging gameplay, accompanied by stories that ranged from amazing to at least decent. But when it comes to The Casting of Frank Stone... I honestly don't have words, and I don't mean that in a good way. Since this game takes place in the world of Dead by Daylight, it will naturally catch the attention of DBD fans. Before I begin, let me give you a piece of advice: [b]Buy this game only during a massive sale, or just watch a playthrough on YouTube.[/b] I've suffered through some bad games before, including Wolfenstein: Youngblood, but this one was genuinely painful. [b] Story[/b] The story, if we can even call it that, is split between two timelines: 1980 and 2024. At first, you play in the 1980 storyline before the game suddenly switches to the present day. My first reaction was: [b]"What the hell does 2024 have to do with something that happened 44 years ago?"[/b] And honestly? It still barely makes sense even after the game explains it. I stopped caring about the story fairly quickly because the writing feels completely disconnected and nonsensical. It honestly feels like whoever wrote the script had no idea how to structure a coherent narrative. The basic premise revolves around Frank Stone, a serial killer who kidnapped and murdered people. You begin as Sheriff Sam, investigating the disappearance of a baby. You find Frank Stone, kill him, and then the game jumps to 2024 where several characters are invited to a mysterious mansion by a strange woman who wants to purchase a film called *Murder Mill*, which was recorded back in 1980. To skip a lot of unnecessary details: The mysterious woman worships [b]The Entity[/b]. Dead by Daylight players already know what that means. For everyone else, The Entity is an otherworldly being that pulls killers and survivors into its realm, forcing them into endless trials where killers hunt and survivors attempt to escape. The woman's grand plan? She wants to use the film to bring Frank Stone back to life. Yes, seriously. Apparently she watched The Ring a few too many times and somehow believes Frank Stone is Sadako. The game also spoils one of its own characters by practically telling you they have plot armor, removing any tension whenever they're in danger. If you want the full story, you're better off looking it up yourself because I genuinely don't have the energy to explain this mess. [b]Gameplay[/b] Gameplay follows the standard Supermassive formula. Unfortunately, The Casting of Frank Stone seems to share a lot of DNA with The Devil in Me, especially when it comes to technical problems. The game is filled with: [list] [*] Bugs [*] Stuttering [*] Ghosting [*] Input delay [/list] And the input delay is absolutely awful. I ended up playing the entire game with an Xbox controller because the delay between my keyboard inputs and the game was so bad that I felt like every interaction happened a second later. The game itself is also incredibly short. My first playthrough took around five hours, and that's only because I spent extra time looking for Dead by Daylight easter eggs. Puzzle sections are painfully simple. Exploration is completely linear. Finding your way through environments requires almost no thought. I was genuinely struggling to stay awake at certain points, partly because the story was so uninteresting and partly because the game often feels more like a mediocre movie than an actual game. You could scroll TikTok during half the cutscenes and barely miss anything important. The gameplay feels unfinished, boring, and overly simplistic. The game repeatedly tells you that every choice matters and can save lives. Yeah... no. I saw almost no meaningful consequences from most decisions. Even The Devil in Me had choices that could save your life later. Here? Not so much. [b]Optimization[/b] This is my favorite part. Normally I save my PC specifications for the end of a review, but in this case I need to show them first because otherwise people probably wouldn't believe me. [b]My PC:[/b] [list] [*] Ryzen 5 7600X [*] Sapphire RX 9070 XT [*] 32GB DDR5 6000MHz [*] MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi [*] 2TB NVMe SSD Storage [*] Seasonic 850W Gold PSU [/list] Now explain something to me: [b]How is it possible that I had to enable Frame Generation and still dropped to around 50 FPS?[/b] This is genuinely one of the worst optimized games I've played in years. I had to use FSR 3 Performance Mode, lower textures, lower graphical settings, and that's without ray tracing enabled. There were sections where I saw 120-300 FPS, sure. But there were also countless moments where performance tanked so hard that Quick Time Events became difficult simply because of stuttering and input delay. In fact, one character died during my playthrough because the game became so choppy and unresponsive that I failed a QTE. I've played games under some pretty rough conditions before, but this was on another level. If your PC is weaker than mine or only barely meets the recommended requirements, I honestly wouldn't recommend buying this game unless you're planning to stream it through GeForce NOW or a similar service. [b]Final Thoughts[/b] I'll keep this simple. While playing this game, I found myself laughing out of pure frustration. I've never played a story-driven game that was simultaneously this boring, this poorly written, and this technically broken. The story barely makes sense. Your decisions rarely matter. The optimization is terrible. And by the end, it feels like nothing you did actually mattered. Supermassive Games didn't just take a step backward here. For the first time, I'm genuinely questioning whether I want to buy their next game at launch. I've been a fan for years. I've enjoyed nearly everything they've made. But this game was an enormous disappointment. And as a Dead by Daylight fan, it's even more frustrating to see a game connected to that universe launch in such an unfinished state. It feels like Supermassive started cooking something interesting, then gave up halfway through and served it anyway. If you're interested in The Casting of Frank Stone, wait for a massive sale or just watch a full walkthrough on YouTube. Even at €5, I don't feel like it was worth my time. (If you play DBD you'll get 2M Bloodpoints for buying this game) [b]Pros[/b] [list] [*] Beautiful graphics [*] Dynamic environments [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*] Confusing and poorly structured story [*] Choices have little to no impact [*] Terrible optimization [*] Massive input delay [*] Very short playtime [*] Lifeless characters with little emotional depth [*] Stuttering animations and noticeable ghosting [*] Facial expressions look straight out of Friday the 13th: The Game [/list] [b]Score: 3/10[/b]

Press skip⏭ to skip this dialogue, oh wait they don't have one. Plot: 5/10 Horror: 1/10 Entertainment: 3/10 Recommendation: You can get it, if you're a die-hard fans of DBD. Spent 32 hours to unlock All Seeing, Never open it again.

Firstly, I have never played DBD. So this review is just based on this game's playthrough. The story hops across three timelines, centering on a group of teens trying to shoot an indie horror flick in 1980. For a short 6 to 8 hour game, it takes an agonizingly long time to get moving. The actual villain, Frank Stone, vanishes for massive chunks of the middle act, leaving you with mundane exploration and teen drama. The mechanics here feel exceptionally thin. The superficial puzzle solving and combat sequences don't add much value. For new players like me who aren't steeped in Dead by Daylight lore, that ending felt less like a satisfying conclusion and more like a jarring narrative brick wall. Later I understood the ending...what it actually meant with Lord Google's help. So buy it at full price if you live and breathe Dead by Daylight lore and want to see how the universe connects or wait for a deep sale if you are just looking for a standalone horror game. Final verdict, you're better off playing Until Dawn or The Quarry instead.

About three hours into the game, you will be exploring the old mill. Everything works fine up until this point, but there is an optional hallway to explore where the other three NPCs will clog up the doorway and become stuck. What makes it worse is that the game auto-saves once you pick up an item in the room, effectively bricking your save. I have tried following the methods listed online, but no dice. I lost a whole evening's worth of progress and cannot find it within me to start over again, not knowing for sure if I will run into another run-ending bug.

There aren't that many franchises where an entirely separate game developed by a separate studio gets to solidify so much of the canon and side lore. It's a treasure trove of lore that I feel not even Dead by Daylight has in the game. I played it on my alt and it was just under 6 hours for one playthrough. It's designed for multiple playthroughs due to collectibles, yet you can't skip cut scenes. Though I've spent eight years of my life and thousands of hours on DBD, I don't really have the drive or time (or patience for lack of a skip button) to replay The Casting of Frank Stone for the collectibles and all the lore. But what I have played through was a great time. I'll probably revisit it in the future, and I would request that the devs add a QoL addition of a skip button for cutscenes. The additional ability that unlocked after one playthrough that shows where collectibles are in subsequent runs is wonderful, but doing at least one more 6-hour run just isn't in my time budget. Overall, it's a solid Supermassive game and a good afternoon/evening spent, especially if you're a DBD player or horror fan. I'm happy I got it at 80% off ($5.99 base or $7.99 deluxe), and that was worth it for me. But I don't think the usual $30-$40 price tag is unreasonable either. I didn't have any performance issues. The deluxe version isn't a must have, but I did enjoy having my characters be in wild alternative costumes rather than the default, and since DBD is my most played game approaching 5k hours, any additional in-game items sweeten the deal a bit more than a [spoiler]pocket mirror[/spoiler]. This game has different routes and many things that affect those routes, so The Cutting Room Floor is an awesome feature though I don't like features being fast-tracked/locked for longer depending on what edition you purchase. There are some wonderful things in Frank Stone that I want to mention and praise. At times when you pass by NPCs, you trigger story relevant dialogue. If you walk away from them, it gets quieter and eventually stops. But if you wrap back around near them later, they'll often continue talking from there with variants of bridging dialogue similar to: "As I was saying before you rudely walked away..." "Yes, like I said..." And continue from where they left off. I don't remember the phrases verbatim, but it's fantastic and nothing I've seen in any other video game, even Supermassive ones. This is the first that I've noticed it. I didn't feel there was anything innovative on the visual front, but this was a really delightful feature and much appreciated. The downside of NPCs is when they follow you in groups; they will constantly awkwardly corner you. It's mildly hilarious if you think about body blocking in DBD, but largely just annoying and I've never seen it quite like this in any other game. If you don't progress where you are meant to go they will stand at odd places, which is helpful in telling you where you will end up going, but also very uncanny since they just stand there. Sometimes they scratch their heads, mostly they just stand looking forward and I feel like I'm in a Doctor Who episode or in the Twilight Zone. [spoiler]End game collapse (EGC) Entity death[/spoiler] being the way it is in the game towards the end is absolutely stunning. I'm very excited for Frank Stone to arrive in DBD, because there are moments like the lift scene where he's absolutely terrifying. All the dolls and little references in Frank Stone are very cool and I hope they make merch versions of them one day. The story has some wonky aspects, but for 90% of it it's very enjoyable and expands the DBD lore well. It's very Supermassive whilst having a DBD twist to it. I think it'd feel more enjoyable to play if you already know at least a bit about DBD as opposed to going into it as a completely standalone game, because the story points aren't delivered that strongly by themselves. That being said, I feel it could've worked well built as its own game without DBD at all and have a Cabin in the Woods flavour to it. The overall architecture and ideas behind introducing all the story elements are awesome.

Pretty good ngl for 5 euros it's really good but not for 40 euros.

Yaşatmak istediğim kim varsa yanlışlıkla öldürdüm. QTE'lerde elim ayağıma dolaştı, tam kurtuldu derken bir tuşa yetişemedim, hop karakter gitti. Finale geldiğimde sevdiğim karakterlerden eser kalmamıştı. Buna rağmen atmosferi, hikâyesi ve seçimlerin gerçekten sonuç doğurması inanılmaz başarılı. Sinir krizleri geçirttirdi ama bir saniye bile sıkılmadım. İlk turum tam bir felaketti, ikinci turda herkesi yaşatmaya ant içtim. 10/10 travma simülatörü.

would not recommend, and i wish i could since i love choice-based games and dead by daylight. the story was not that bad, although it could be more interesting, i personally felt kinda bored and had a hard time finishing the game. it felt like idk, its lacking something, but thats my personal opnion. not to mention, the optimisation at the end of the game is so bad that i thought something happened to my pc-turned out it was a common problem with sudden fps drops out of nowhere. if you want to buy it, its better to wait for the discount-in my opinion the game is not worth the original price.

For a Dead by Daylight lore enthusiast, the game is pretty cool. You see lots of references and connections to its universe. For someone who's not at all familiar with Dead by Daylight, the game is mid. The choices don't really matter, and maybe three characters at most will seem somewhat interesting to you. Oh, and the game's optimization is one of the worst I've ever seen. I'll let my bias win and give it a positive review because I like that they tried expanding the world of Dead by Daylight outside the main game, and I want to see more games set in its universe. That said, only buy the game on sale. And if you care about DBD cosmetics, get the Deluxe Edition.

Very cool story (to those who know about dbd, a lot of references), but REALLY BAD performance, lots of freezes and stutters even with very good pc. I finally played it because DBD announced Frank Stone is coming to DBD and it's cool to learn the story via game (again, very cool story tbh) If in a promo, worth to pick up