Dead Take is not at all what I was expecting from the sophomore effort from Surgent Studios, the developer behind Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Whereas the studio’s first title was a great search-action game with an emotional tale about grief set in a Bantu myth-inspired world, Dead Take is a first-person psychological horror game that delves into the untold stories and disconcerting truths that actors face day-to-day in the entertainment industry.
“So, to give you an idea of what this kind of game is, it’s a psychological horror escape room, but it’s like a reverse escape room. It’s not necessarily [about] coming out of the space, but going in,” Dead Take creative director Abubakar Salim told me. “[And] the deeper you go, the further in [protagonist Chase] goes into this mansion, the more the secrets are unwrapped and the darker reality [gets]. And that’s sort of where I’m playing into [the horror]. There is almost a sense of understanding, but also a sense of disgust.”
“[Dead Take is a reaction to] just things that are happening within the industry and what I’ve kind of experienced, what I’ve gone through. [While] also pulling from friends’ experiences in the industry and talking about it,” he continued. “This shift [in genre] is really a reaction, not only tied to what’s going on in the world and in the industry, but also with the conversations I’ve been having with other actors, with other people in the world, both in film as well as in games, and being like, ‘Yeah, let’s tell this story. Let’s do something here. I love horror, we love luring people down a rabbit hole. We flexed that muscle a bit with the Sabulana storyline [in] Zau and so we were like, ‘Let’s just go full force [in the next game].'”
The gameplay of Dead Take sees you attempt to reconstruct what’s happened to Chase’s friend, a fellow actor, by solving environmental puzzles in a bizarrely shaped and decorated mansion, while also splicing together live-action found footage to uncover hidden details about the characters.
Chase is portrayed by Neil Newbon (Baldur’s Gate 3’s Astarion, Resident Evil Village’s Karl Heisenberg) while the friend he’s looking for, Vinny, is portrayed by Ben Starr (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Verso, Natural Six’s Raidion). While the world of the game that you’re exploring as Chase is a created 3D space, the segments of Vinny and Chase that you discover are FMV recordings of Starr and Newbon.
As seen in the latest gameplay trailer for Dead Take, some of this found footage showcases that both Vinny and Chase have auditioned for the same role of “Willie,” likely a character for an upcoming movie or video game. Chase finds these clips in a Hollywood exec’s mansion where a glamorous party took place the night before–one he wasn’t invited to, but Vinny was. With Vinny having disappeared and no longer answering his phone, Chase must search the mansion for his friend, uncovering what transpired the night before as well as additional secrets he wasn’t privy to during his audition for Willie. And as part of that investigation, you’ll have to find and splice together clips of Newbon and Starr acting as Chase and Vinny.
“You’ll get two scenes, and within these two scenes you have the actor–they’re doing their thing on-camera or off-camera–and then another actor off-camera,” Salim said. “One could be an audition piece, one could be an interview. The idea is that you could then mix them or splice them together, and the dialogue mixed together then informs the resolution [to certain puzzles].
If the trailers are anything to go on, Dead Take doesn’t seem to utilize tried-and-true features like jump scares to startle its players. Salim said that there are no supernatural or sci-fi elements to add a monstrous twist to an already horrifying situation. The scares are purely driven by psychological terror, pulling the player into a scenario that’s fictional but mirrors the dread that real people contend with day-to-day.
“For me, the horror aspect of [Dead Take] is the horror of man and how far you’ll go for success, especially within the entertainment industry,” Salim said. “Like the kind of stories that [are] psychological–they’re the stories that you read and that have a factor of creepiness to them, and you’re like, ‘Oh, really? Did you go that far?’ And I think that, to me, is where I’m wanting to lean.”
Dead Take is scheduled to launch on PC this year. Surgent Studios is also working on a second Tales of Kenzera game, Project Uso, which is a gothic-horror RPG that touches on parenthood and identity in an Afrofuturist setting. Currently, no release window has been announced for it.
