Imagine running through a cornfield as a blood-stained monstrosity chases you, fearing for your life. You make it to a few hay bales with a large wooden pallet that you hope will put a stop to the monster if you can slam it on top of it at the right moment. You use all of your strength to slam it on your pursuer’s face. It looks up with anger but is seemingly otherwise unfazed. It smashes the pallet down effortlessly and swings again, hitting you in the abdomen.

Now injured you begin to run away. The killer seems to disappear as you run to a worn-down shack to heal. The killer following scratch marks and bloodstains heads to the shack and hears moaning and groaning with the sounds of tape ripping. The killer sets a bear trap outside the window and walks into the shack. You panic, the first thing that comes to mind is to jump out the window and SNAP you’re caught. You begin to panic even more than before. You see the killer’s red light from around the corner, he slowly walks up to you, and it’s all over.

This is just a taste of what it is like to play Dead By Daylight, an asymmetrical horror action game, which has garnered a dedicated fan base since its original release in 2016. The game is centered around four “survivors” who are working to repair generators that power a gate that allows them to escape an area with a killer who is determined to kill them all.

Since the game’s original release, Dead by Daylight has received many updates and expansions to the roster of iconic survivors and killers. The first horror icon to be added was Michael Myers from “Halloween.” His character was released on Oct. 16, 2016, the same year the game was released. The game has continued to add both original killers and horror icons from series such as “Saw,” “Hellraiser,” “The Ring,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and many others.

As a pioneer of this genre, “Dead By Daylight” has impacted the game community quite a bit. There have been many crossovers with other series like “For Honor,” “Rainbow Six Siege,” and “Meet Your Maker” — and that’s not even mentioning Dead By Daylight’s own iconic horror characters it has developed over the years. Dead By Daylight has become hugely popular, with many YouTube channels devoted to the game and tournaments held by big organizations and players. Many games have tried to copy DBD’s game model, yet none seem to last long. Recently, DBD reached a milestone with the game achieving 60 million players which is certainly something to be proud of.

The latest horror icon to join DBD’s roster is the Good Guy, also known as Chucky. Chucky’s character was released on November 28th, 2023, and has been met with great praise. The character is fun, unique, and faithful to the original series. The character is voiced by Brad Dourif, the original voice for Chucky. Chucky was released with a unique skin that turns Chucky into his partner in crime Tiffany, whom Jennifer Tilly voices. His gameplay is also very fun and unique. He has a special mode named Hidey-Ho which allows him to go into stealth mode and hide his terror radius, which is an area around the killer where you can hear a heartbeat. The killer also loses their red stain, which is a red light that comes out where the killer is looking. Chucky is very quiet and can easily sneak up on survivors using his power.
In addition to this ability, Chucky also gets access to a dash called Slice and Dice, which allows him to move very quickly over a long distance ending with a huge lunging slash. In his Hidey-Ho mode, Chucky can also scamper underneath pallets and come out the other side. The only other character able to move over pallets in a similar way is the Legion when they are in Feral Frenzy.

Chucky is also very small, being the smallest killer in the game. This could cause some issues with the game model because the point of the game is to down survivors, carry them, and put them on a meat hook, which is impossible for Chucky because of his height. Despite this, the developers found an incredibly creative solution. Since Chucky is possessed by the spirit of Charles Lee Ray, who is the actual killer, whenever Chucky picks someone up, the spirit comes out and you hold them over your shoulder. Overall Chucky is a great addition to the game and he is a blast.
Dead By Daylight contains many killers, both original and licensed. Every killer plays differently with only a few overlapping similarities. Chucky shares similarities with the Legion and their ability to vault pallets, Ghostface and his ability to enter stealth willingly, and finally the Blight and his ability to dash. Though it may seem like a mash of killers’ abilities, Chucky has his own unique voice lines and he is tiny compared to the other killers. His dash functions differently from Blight; instead of bouncing around the map, Chucky gets a huge lunge that ends when he either runs out of time or hits someone. His vault is also called scamper, allowing him to slide under pallets to get past them. Finally, his stealth mode leaves footprints behind so that you can still track him — otherwise, he would be completely silent and incredibly small. So while he has the same ideas they are executed completely differently and in a way that keeps the game fun and fresh. Chucky is truely a masterpiece of a killer and they did “Child’s Play” justice with this chapter.