Until Dawn is a horror game that was originally announced for the PS3 way back in August 2012 as a PlayStation Move title.  Every few months afterwards, we’d get an announcement stating that the game was still in development but not much else.  Then, in August 2014, Pete Samuels, executive producer at Supermassive Games, announced that Until Dawn would now be exclusively developed for PS4 and, much to the excitement of fans, the PS Move controls were being abandoned.

“It’s been a while since we talked about Until Dawn, but we’re now thrilled to reveal the latest on the game… and it’s now for PS4,” Samuels said in a post on the PlayStation Blog. “We were also overwhelmed by the amount of you that let us know you wanted to play the game with regular DualShock controls, so we took a step back and considered how to make this change. At around that time we started to learn more about PlayStation 4 and the DualShock 4 and so made the decision to make Until Dawn next gen.”

Usually extensive delays with radio silence spell disaster for a title (Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?), but Supermassive has approached the transition with caution.

“We re-designed, re-built and re-wrote the game so now you have a more mature, darker and fundamentally more terrifying experience on PS4.”  Stripping the game of its original assets and starting from scratch means a more dedicated approach than trying to port all the bits and pieces from the PS3 to PS4.

That change includes a whole new script for Until Dawn.  Supermassive brought on “horror auteurs Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick (Stake Land, Habit, The Last Winter) who’ve been bringing great independent horror movies to the big and small screen for decades” to give the game a script with a cinematic feel.  Most of their IMDB pages are made up of acting or sound development credits, but I wouldn’t discount the quality of their work from what I’ve seen of the game.

Until Dawn’s narrative is a horror aficionado’s dream.  It’s trope-filled from the moment Hollywood actress Hayden Panettiere belts a concerned, “Hello?” down a darkened empty hallway.

Eight friends get trapped in a mountain-nestled vacation home in the middle of no where. According to a press release, “things quickly turn sinister, and they start to suspect they aren’t alone.” Maybe it’s talking about the part where Panettiere’s character sees her friend get absolutely eviscerated on film?

While the overarching story of Until Dawn may be an homage to classics, its underlying mechanics are wholly unique.  Each of your choices as you try to evade your pursuer, whether you’re deciding if one of your friends lives or dies, or simply answering whether you’re more afraid of crowds or darkness, the game preys on your decisions and changes the game to best suit and exploit your biggest fears. I’m pretty much scared of everything, so Until Dawn had me shaking in my boots at the word “clown.”  Your decisions will determine whether you live to see the morning.

Players will control all eight of the friends as they try to escape a fiendish foe.  You’ll undoubtedly be reminded of Heavy Rain as button presses appear on screen to correspond with certain actions. While escaping down a staircase, for example, keep an eye open for a button popup, or you might find yourself taking a tumble that could lead to your demise.  PS4 owners who also have the PlayStation Camera will be tasked with remaining still while the camera tracks the light on the back of the controller, perhaps the best integration I’ve seen yet.  Move the light too much, and you’ll alert the killer to your hiding spot.

Your own personal path can be tracked amid the thousands that are possible using the Butterfly-Effect Interface. Supermassive boasts that “seemingly insignificant choices as well as huge moral dilemmas that will question your sense of fairness, good and evil, can have major unforeseen consequences.”  From the gameplay we’ve seen so far, those moral decisions haven’t quite played out. It’s mostly been about running or hiding.

That choice between fleeing the scene versus staying in a secluded spot has been the biggest point of fear when looking at Until Dawn.  A split second decision has to be made as to whether or not I’m concealed well enough where I am, and that judgment call is enough to make my stomach churn indefinitely, even after the game is turned off.

Graphically, Until Dawn is one of the most impressive games to date.  The Killzone Shadow Fall Engine makes characters and lighting look insanely realistic.  Along with the extremely detailed motion capture depicting quality performances, at times it was difficult to believe that what I was watching was in-engine as opposed to a prerendered cutscene.  Graphical fidelity accents the gruesome nature of Supermassive’s story.

Until Dawn has a rumored release date of June 24, 2015, which, if true, we should expect to hear officially from Sony by the end of E3.