The Casting of Frank Stone is the latest horror adventure game by Supermassive Games, this time under the publishing arm of Behaviour Interactive to create a story set in the Dead by Daylight universe.
Having Supermassive Games develop a Dead by Daylight story in their usual adventure game style was both a really strange and excellent choice. Dead by Daylight is an online multiplayer live service game with little storyline besides the lore behind its villains and characters, which is what The Casting of Frank Stone taps into. Here, we see the lore pan out in Supermassive Games-style, telling the origin story of both one of this universe’s slasher villains (not actually included in Dead by Daylight) and the concept of its world. The strangeness comes in when you create a partnership between a live service game with very little story and a developing team who currently specialize in games with a whole lot of story and very little gameplay.
After The Casting of Frank Stone failed to launch a few times, I finally got into the menu. Unfortunately it only has couch co-op and, while I’m thankful that this is one of the few modern games still supporting couch co-op, I did sorely miss the online co-op too – especially considering it’s been present in most of their recent releases and has even been incorporated into the gameplay in the case of Man of Medan. I’m not entirely sure why it was removed in this instance, especially since Dead By Daylight is entirely online co-op so its fans would be looking for this, especially if they were planning to play this with people they usually play Dead by Daylight with.
Like a lot of the previous Supermassive Games, The Casting of Frank Stone begins with a prologue set in the past. We take control of police officer Sam Green as he’s investigating a missing child and his search takes him to Cedar Steel Mill. He eventually finds mill worker, Frank Stone, performing some kind of ritual and is about to throw the baby into the mill’s furnace. Depending on our choices and success with the Quick Time Events, we successfully kill Frank Stone either before or after he sacrifices the infant. The game then switches between a time period in the 80s and the present day where we control two characters in each.
In the present day, we take control of Madison and horror movie director, Linda Castle, who, along with a Linda Castle fan, Stan, have been invited to Gerant Manor by a collector, Augustine, to potentially sell their reel of ‘Murder Mill’, Linda’s first film. The film is supposedly cursed, and during its release caused members of the audience in multiple screenings to go on a murderous rampage.
The 80s section then follows Jaime, Madison’s uncle, and Christine who are filming a horror movie with a young Linda and then later Sam Green’s (now sheriff) son, Robert. After Sam catches the group trespassing at the mill to film, they accidentally break their camera before being sent off the premises. The group then purchase a new one from a strange vintage store, which definitely won’t have any paranormal consequences at all, and after hearing about the case with Frank Stone from Robert, decide to break into the mill again to complete their film, this time basing it on Frank Stone.
The game then unfolds as the group in the present day discover Augustine’s true plan and the nature behind the reels, and the teenagers in the 80s as they uncover the evil doings of Frank Stone that weren’t picked up by the police. While I was under the impression that The Casting of Frank Stone could be played without being a fan of Dead by Daylight, by the time I got to the end of the story I realized this wasn’t the case. As mentioned before, it not only tells the origin story of Frank Stone, but also delves into the universe that Dead by Daylight is set in, explaining why its survivor characters are endlessly going into areas to team up against slasher villains. But it does a very poor job of explaining this in a way that would be understandable to those who haven’t played Dead by Daylight. Considering these are VERY different game genres to one another, it’s very strange that The Casting of Frank Stone only really caters to the player group who are fans of the live service game and not the fans of Supermassive Games titles.
To begin with, I found The Casting of Frank Stone to have a much more interesting premise than some of Supermassive Games’ previous titles and felt as involved in the characters and story as I did with Until Dawn. Being longer than The Dark Pictures Anthology titles at around six hours, so more akin to Until Dawn and The Quarry, we get to spend more time with them and in turn, grow more attached. There’s also less characters to get to know than Until Dawn and The Quarry which I think works out best for these style of games considering their length.
That being said, I think the third act of The Casting of Frank Stone felt rushed somewhat. We had a lengthy build up, an interesting premise, and then it’s quickly bundled up towards the end and then abruptly cut off. I feel like Supermassive Games could have actually taken some time to properly explain how the ending ties into Dead by Daylight for the benefit of those who haven’t played it and it would have felt far more satisfying. There was also a neat tie in to the Dead by Daylight original survivor characters at the end, but this is only apparent in one of the endings where neither Linda or Madison make it out alive in Gerant Manor and ironically makes for the most satisfying ending because of this. There are 17 endings in total, two of which are hidden and are supposedly the good endings, but they only hint towards a solution to the game’s outcome and we don’t get to see the full benefit of it so it feels immensely unsatisfying. Like The Quarry, we also don’t get any time with our characters after the events of the game to find out how our choices affected them, it just ends and we’re left with that.
Because there are 17 endings in total and only two which hint at some form of “good” ending, The Casting of Frank Stone is designed so that you will most likely get a bad ending on your first playthrough. We then have a feature called ‘The Cutting Room’ which gets unlocked at the end of our first playthrough and allows us to go back on a chapter and replay the game. The only problem with this is that you can’t skip the dialogue or cutscenes you’ve already seen, so it still feels like a slog to replay these chapters and I honestly don’t even recommend it because the “good endings” are so poorly played out that they don’t even feel worth it or satisfying.
In terms of the actual choices we can make, they don’t feel nearly as cutthroat as those in Supermassive Games’ previous titles. I never really felt like I was scratching my head over a choice as it’s mostly dialogue options rather than decisions. There are maybe two decisions that directly affect the outcome of the ending, the rest are just minor changes to conversations and there’s supposedly a relationship meter between the characters like in Until Dawn, but I again never really felt the effects of that.
We’re also missing that ‘choice reflection’ element that Supermassive Games has used in their previous adventure games. In Until Dawn it was the psychiatrist, in The Dark Pictures Anthology it’s the curator, and in The Quarry it was the fortune teller. These are characters that will speak to the player at the end of each chapter, break the fourth wall and reflect on the choices the player has made. We were also able to see premonitions of the results of certain choices in these games, which we don’t have in The Casting of Frank Stone. I found these to be really interesting and also a fun way to put doubt into the player’s mind over a choice they might have felt strongly about when they made it. Like the online co-op, this is sorely missed in The Casting of Frank Stone.
In terms of the characters, Linda Castle and Sam Green are probably the most interesting and the rest come off as annoying most of the time. Though this mostly comes down to the voice acting in terms of Madison and Christine. To begin with, Christine’s performance is almost like a cartoon character and feels very unrealistic. Madison on the other hand just feels really unconvincing and you can definitely tell the voice behind the character isn’t actually living out the situation she’s in.
Jaime on the other hand is very contradictory as a character, though this might just be how he is rather than down to poor writing as he is a teenager who seems to have some intense conflicting emotions. While controlling him is annoying because his dialogue options are so ridiculous, I also think as Christine we don’t really have the choice to call him out on this, thus the game isn’t recognising that Jaime is in the wrong. An example of this would be when Robert joins the group and Jaime is immediately jealous that he and Christine start to get along. He argues with Robert that he just wants some time alone with Christine… after Robert helped them get into the mill in the first place, plus they’re working as a group to put together a film in ONE NIGHT, not on a lover’s retreat. I just felt like we weren’t really able to call Jaime out on his ridiculous behavior. Unfortunately another fault with this character is that he feels heavily neglected towards the end of the game. In fact, I don’t think we get to control him once in the third act which would be really disappointing to the player assigned to him in a four player couch co-op.
Augustine and Frank Stone also feel very underdeveloped as the game’s main villains. Augustine’s reasoning for her actions is unexplained and we know very little about her throughout despite the fact that she acts as the game’s narrator on some occasions. She just seems to want to be evil for evil’s sake and it feels very unconvincing. Frank, on the other hand, despite being the game’s titular character is also heavily unexplored. We know what he did, we can find letters sort of explaining his past a bit, and we know he’s now a ghost. But we don’t seem to spend time with him as an actual character at all. He’s just an unspeaking villain who’s done unspeakable things, which works in a way but also makes the storyline feel really detached from him.
In terms of gameplay, I was expecting a Supermassive Games adventure title to have very little of it, which I’m fine with as I’ve always argued that if you’re playing these games then you shouldn’t be expecting a lot of gameplay to begin with. But every time they try to introduce some form of gameplay, such as in The Devil in Me, it’s very poorly done. In this case, it comes in the form of generators. The first time this happened it was a little fun tie in moment to Dead by Daylight, and I would have been fine if this had been a one time occurrence. We discover that the generator is broken, oh no! Now we must find the missing parts and repair it using the Dead by Daylight-style skill checks, only without the pressure of a monster trying to kill you in the process. Unfortunately The Casting of Frank Stone repeats this moment several times and it feels exhausted by the end. It’s a very boring segment, where all the generator pieces are usually in the same area and it’s just a bit of repetitive gameplay that feels like a slog every time it comes up. I’m really hoping that at some point Supermassive Games just decides to bin off any attempts to introduce more gameplay elements into its games and stick with what it knows it does best in these titles – the storyline, decisions and Quick Time Events that have story outcomes.
Another gameplay element which could have been good but ended up, again, being poorly designed was the moment when Frank Stone’s ghost starts haunting Cedar Mill. For some reason he hates the vintage camera we bought to replace the broken one, so whenever his ghost pops up we must point the camera at him and record him, ignoring the fact that the camera starts jolting with paranormal energy every time we do so – I’m sure that will be of no consequence later on! These segments involve simply pointing the camera at Frank Stone whenever an audio cue lets us know he’s near, and basically fend him off before he manages to slow walk to us. The game tries to make this more difficult by having the camera randomly flick away every now and again, but it never really feels like we’re in any danger. This could have been more intense if they had thrown further obstacles in the mix, but instead just feels as much as a slog as the generator moments.
As Supermassive Games’ adventure titles keep looking better and better with every instalment, it’s of no surprise that The Casting of Frank Stone is their best looking title yet. This is not just on the realism scale either, there are plenty of trippy visuals to make this game look even more gorgeous. I was thoroughly impressed with the lighting and different camera angles and movements too, these games truly are starting to look like films.
The only problem with this is that The Casting of Frank Stone is very poorly optimized. It already comes with a very high recommended spec of an Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and a Nvidia RTX 3070 or AMD RX 6800 (or similar). I have a Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti and had severe loading and framerate issues on medium settings and I’ve also heard of people with much higher end PCs also struggling to run this game. Hopefully this will be patched with future updates as it really affected the third act in particular for me. As well as the problems launching the game, I also had a case of it crashing on one occasion on top of the very poor performance.
Audio-wise, not only does The Casting of Frank Stone have one of the more memorable soundtracks of the Supermassive Titles, but I also had a fun time recognising the various sound effects from Dead by Daylight and I think it did a very good job of incorporating this into such a different game genre.
While The Casting of Frank Stone had one of the more interesting premises of the Supermassive titles, its story felt very unsatisfying towards the third act. It spent so much time building up towards the grand finale and allowing us to become attached to its characters that it forgot about the actual payoff. Despite the replayability features included in this title, I just didn’t feel an urge to replay this one due to how disappointing it’s endings are.
Jess played The Casting of Frank Stone on PC with her own bought copy.
