From Movie Web:

Supermassive Games are known for developing games that focus on a deep narrative, in which the player is able to change along the way. However, the most popular and recognizable instance of this is the interactive drama-horror, Until Dawn. The cast of characters is trapped at an isolated cabin spot, where they must survive until they are rescued at dawn. The game has a lot of scares, but the basis is pretty simple and similar to most slasher films. There is a big scary guy following them around, and traps set all over Blackwood Mountain, where they were staying and hoping to have a good time.

Until Dawn is not to just be taken at surface level, because there are a lot of twists and turns to the story, and shocking revelations to be made. When the player discovers the truth about what is happening, the game almost swaps horror genres entirely to provide some less-than-human spooks, and that is part of what makes this title feel so special. While it would not be the most innovative horror movie of all time, it has a good enough narrative to be compelling in the format, and there is not always a need to reinvent the wheel.

Someone good at creating suspense and a large group of interesting characters is Mike Flanagan, who can be credited for the Haunting anthology series and Midnight Mass. Flanagan has shown a distaste for jump scares (outside of breaking a record revolving around them), so it would be interesting to see Until Dawn adapted in a way that deviates from video game clichés, and displays it as a more serious title. Until Dawn also has a prequel called The Inpatient, which would be a no-brainer addition to the horror franchise if it were to ever be brought to cinema.

1) UNTIL DAWN: There are plenty more things that make Until Dawn the best horror game from Supermassive games, but the one that stands out in the light is its emotional value. When Until Dawn was released in the year 2015, it changed the way gamers looked at the studios. Despite the existence of previous decision-changing horror games, Until Dawn altered the perception of the genre to an extent.

If The Quarry was targeted at the modern generation Until Dawn was a complete homage to the 80’s and 90’s Cabin in the Woods (Not to be confused with the movie of the same name), horror slasher genre. Not only did it manage to create a cinematic experience, the addition of stars like Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, Meaghan Martin, Brett Dalton, Jordan Fisher, Nichole Bloom, and Peter Stormare made it impossible to forget.

See full list HERE

Reznick gets his due in extensive conversation about Until Dawn,
The Quarry and Supermassive’s The Dark Pictures.

Is the interactive horror movie making its long-overdue comeback?

By Alexander Chatziioannou
…

“I think the entertainment industry has a tendency to shoot itself in the foot and get too excited about emerging technologies,” said Graham Reznick, lead writer on both “Until Dawn” (alongside indie-horror legend Larry Fessenden) and “The Quarry.” “We’ve seen it over and over again with 3D and VR. These are viable artistic mediums that need to be explored organically. But when you get a lot of money and expectations put into them, they can easily topple before they’ve had a chance to mature. That’s probably what happened in the ‘90s with FMVs.”

Reznick even includes traditional adventure games in the interactive movie’s long lineage of partial successes and outright failures. Growing up without a dedicated console, he would use his father’s work PC to immerse himself in games like “King’s Quest,” which he considers “essentially, weirdly templates for what Supermassive ends up doing.”

“[It] seems counterintuitive because the latter [of Supermassive’s Games] are primarily narrative-driven,” he told The Washington Post, “but they do share more with Sierra adventures than people tend to realize.”

While citing point ‘n clicks as a precursor to the modern interactive movie may raise some eyebrows, at the same time it highlights how a fresh perspective on the genre — one focused on storytelling rather than the technological spectacle and star-studded casts of the FMV era — proved vital for Supermassive’s success with the genre.

Byles, who joined the Guildford-based studio in 2010, is slightly older and, having followed the medium’s cinematic ambitions from the start, somewhat less controversial with his historical references.

“I loved ‘Dragon’s Lair’ — I spent a bloody fortune on it!” he said, referring to the most celebrated product of the Laserdisc era, a gorgeously animated fantasy arcade game helmed by occasional Spielberg collaborator Don Bluth that was visually indistinguishable from his award-winning animated films.

Despite approaching the interactive movie’s winding genealogy from different entry points, both contributors were aware of the pitfalls involved in Supermassive’s undertaking. If overinvestment doomed the medium’s most orchestrated pursuit of the interactive-movie ideal, it could be argued that Supermassive’s creative triumph was, at least partly, due to the freedom of operating outside the zeitgeist.

…

Read in-depth article at The Washington Post

Players anticipate the management of eight young grown-ups who should create on account of Blackwood Mountain if their lives are jeopardized. The sport highlights a butterfly effect frame where players need to settle on conclusions that may alter the story. Each playable character can survive or kick the bucket, determined by the choices made. Players investigate the ground from a third-individual perspective and detect intimations that can help unravel the key.

See Full Announcement HERE

Penned by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick.

The BAFTA award winning game from Supermassive Games is available
on the Playstation Store at a discounted price. Download it today!

“A damn near perfect game, which just breathes horror on every level.
The game puts you in control of a group of teens and terrifies you while doing so.”
– XGN

Written by Fessenden and Graham Reznick for Supermassive Games,
this BAFTA winning game stands the test of time!

#1: UNTIL DAWN

Until Dawn’s core appeal is that it gives us enlightened genre aficionados a chance to put our money where our mouth is and finally demonstrate that we would actually be able to hack it in one of those slasher flicks we know so much about. Everyone has watched Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or Friday the 13th and ruminated on how they would be a much sharper protagonist than those making dumb mistakes on the screen. Always mocking these fictional characters for their errors – like investigating suspicious noises, tripping over in the woods, and failing to pick up defensive weapons – we’re under the impression that our survival instincts are above reproach and that, if we ever found ourselves in a comparable scenario, we wouldn’t falter. 

Supermassive Games’ interactive horror movie invites us to test out that theory, by making us responsible for a group of prospective murder victims so dated and stereotypical, that you almost expect it to be foreshadowing some kind of Cabin in the Woods meta-commentary. There’s the rich mean girl, the arrogant jock, the class clown, the awkward bookish type, the aspiring model, the pervy weirdo and, of course, the token final girl. To a certain extent all these characteristics are inflexible and set in stone (it’s not like you can transform the athlete into an engineering major, or make the unbearable comic-relief actually funny) but what you can do is influence their actions, within the parameters of the given personas of course, to facilitate desired outcomes. 

For example, you could fan the flames of a hormonal dispute to create entertaining drama, you could deliberately lead one of them to meet a grisly end at the hands of a wood chipper, or – if you want to be super boring about it – you could try to keep everyone alive until the credits roll. The game won’t admonish you either way, meaning that you’re free to pull the strings however you see fit. It’s almost like you get to direct your own horror movie, tallying up the ideal kill count, indulging in your preferred clichés and, at one point, even dictating what form the scares will take. I personally enjoyed discovering just how many gruesome death variations there were for each character, as some of the elaborate fatalities proved to be exceptionally imaginative. 

Experimenting with all the different branches is what’s so engrossing about Until Dawn, because it legitimately feels like an open-ended narrative. People can die at the drop of a hat (due to either an obscure decision that was made hours ago or something as insignificant as a failed QTE) and whole environments can be skipped over if you don’t forge the requisite path. Granted, it’s not an especially frightening game – and those sections wherein you sluggishly potter around looking for glistening objects to advance the plot can get a little wearisome – but that doesn’t detract from the overall experience. Because getting to be the puppet master is just way too much fun. – Harrison Abbott

See Full List and Review HERE

Until Dawn, written by GEP pal Graham Reznick and Fessenden,
sited in AV Club Best Of The Decade list. 

From AV Club: Until Dawn pushed the “interactive movie” label even further
(complete with horror mainstay Larry Fessenden there to write all the cheesy dialogue).

See Full List HERE

From The Verge:

One of my favorite PS4 games is Until Dawn, Supermassive’s cinematic horror adventure from 2015. The game took Heavy Rain’s branching story structure and applied it to a self-aware slasher tale, which felt like a much more natural fit — even if you made the wrong call and let a character die in an gory instant, the story would just keep going. And though it was a single-player game by design, it turned out to work really well with a bunch of people on a sofa yelling frantic instructions to the player. For Supermassive’s next game, the British studio is expanding on that idea. Hidden Agenda is a new narrative-driven PS4 crime thriller that’s designed to be played with multiple players collaborating on the characters’ decisions and actions. The really neat step is that each person uses their smartphone as a controller, letting them vote on options and act on information that may not be available to everyone else.

From Gamespot:

One of the cool surprises from Sony’s E3 2017 briefing tonight was the PlayStation VR game The Inpatient. More details for the psychological horror game have now come to light, including the fact that it’s a prequel set 60 year before Supermassive’s previous game, Until Dawn.

Supermassive worked with Until Dawn writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick on the story for The Inpatient. The Inpatient is one of two PlayStation VR games from Supermassive that was announced today during Sony’s E3 briefing. The other is a crime thriller called Hidden Agenda.