A couple of years ago, one of the best narrative experiences came to video games with Sam Barlow at the helm of Half Mermaid, who produced the detective story, Immortality. It was a bold and nefariously dark tale of Hollywood and the film industry, powered by performances from brilliant actors and showcased with live-action snippets. I bring this up because Dead Take attempts to do something incredibly similar, but across a much smaller project.
The two games share plenty of similarities; they both focus on the sinister backroom shenanigans of the film industry; they both employ the use of live action scenes to convey the drama unfolding; and they are each, essentially, a puzzle game asking players to piece together a fractured narrative.
In Immortality, we used clips of footage from films and promotional campaigns to solve the core mystery; in Dead Take, we explore an abandoned Hollywood mansion after a party and look for clues as to what happened. And along the way, we’ll also watch film clips, sometimes splicing them together to create something new.
While I would prefer not to compare games when reviewing them, it’s hard not to see how much these games have in common, even though they both offer something entirely unique when we delve into their respective stories.
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We start Dead Take as Chase, an actor who is looking for his friend Vinny, also an actor. Vinny was last seen at the mansion of Duke Cain, a Hollywood bigshot who not only dominates the box office, but also seems to run many parts of the industry. Vinny won’t pick up his phone, and so Chase heads over to Duke’s mansion with torch in hand, to see what’s happened.
From here, we search the property, solving puzzles along the way. These puzzles vary from remembering codes, to finding pieces of a statue strewn around. Much of this is what you would expect from a puzzle game, though I’m loath to call it that. Because Dead Take feels more like a walking simulator with stark horror elements thrown in. Not because there aren’t a plethora of puzzles to solve, but because all of them are relatively simple and feel like hurdles to leap, rather than mountains to climb.
This is due to the narrative being such a strong force. It’s something I’d love to discuss, but practically everything I want to say about Dead Take’s plot would be a spoiler. Instead, I’ll give you an idea of the themes touched upon in the game: sexual assault, ritualistic actions, mental health disorders, coercion, abuse of power, manipulation, and Satanism. Each of these is handled well, and when the mood shifts into the bleakest of territories, it never feels like it is done for shock value, even when we’re handed a black light torch to look for incriminating stains.
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A large part of the game will have players sat in Duke Cain’s personal cinema, watching clips found throughout the mansion on USB drives. These can be selected and viewed, with each being wonderfully acted by Neil Newborn as Chase, Ben Starr as Vinny, and Jane Perry as Mrs Cain. There are some startling and superb cameos from Sam Lake, Matt Mercer, Laura Bailey, and Alanah Pearce that each leave an indelible mark, particularly Mercer who delivers a frightening monologue in the later stages.
It’s through these clips, and various notes scattered about, that we build a picture not just of Chase and Vinny, two actors vying for the same role, but also Duke Cain, who casts a shadow over the whole experience. It’s hard not to see real world parallels in these characters, which only makes the actions described more sinister.
As we collect USB drives, we slowly merge some of them together using a splicing technique, which opens up even more scenes to watch, many of which glitch and crackle, offering a found footage style to the horror here. And even as a seasoned horror fanatic, there were points I either jumped out of my skin, or felt increasingly unsettled.
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The use of imagery is stellar, with the tropes of horror films being wheeled out to scare the player; a lone Jack-in-the-Box that begs to be wound; a baby’s crib covered in patches of blood; statues that seem to move from the corner of your eye; shadows containing movement. And while each of these works on the nerves, the game’s sound design strokes the hair on the necks of players, with babies crying, someone manically laughing, or the steady thumping of a heartbeat.
It’s clear Surgent Studios is pulling from the breadth of both Hollywood and the videogame industry. The Cain mansion is a modern equivalent of the Spencer mansion from Resident Evil; the spiralling feeling of sanity ebbing away is reminiscent of Silent Hill, or Eternal Darkness. Then there’s the film industry creeping in with plenty of healthy dollops of David Lynch, a little Hitchcock, and some Ari Aster, Jennifer Kent, and David Robert Mitchell thrown in to really get under our skin.
Perhaps the biggest influence plays a major part of one of the stories, where players have to manipulate artwork to depict four scenes from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and the constant sense of guilt at what happened in this mansion, the devious heartbeat behind the walls, echoes Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Telltale Heart.
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One might argue that Dead Take is a little on the short side, or the puzzles a breeze - though two particular puzzles tested me for longer than I’d like to admit - and that the later beats of the story border on being too vague or up for interpretation. Those are certainly critiques to level here, but the journey through the Cain mansion will stay with me for many weeks to come, and the story of jealousy, sacrifice, and power, will linger longer.
If you want to see some stellar performances, or experience some chilling horror, or simply find solutions to fiendish puzzles, then do it with Dead Take, and do it in one sitting. Because the four hours I spent wandering the darkened halls of this mansion will haunt me for some time yet.
Pros: Superb acting, some ingenious puzzles, chilling and sinister, Great use of light and sound
Cons: A little too short
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For fans of: Twin Peaks, Silent Hill, Immortality, Resident Evil
9/10: Exceptional
Dead Take is available now on PC (version tested). A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.