The Casting of Frank Stone is a Supermassive Games horror release, with all the usual positives and negatives you’d expect.
Supermassive Games have very much carved out a niche for themselves as a horror game team. Until Dawn shook up the genre for a while with its choice-driven narrative and schlocky teen horror stylings. Since then, it feels as though they’ve been chasing that same high with the likes of The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology. I realise that these are divisive games, but I find myself quite drawn to them. The Casting of Frank Stone fits their mould well enough, with the added bonus of being set in the Dead By Daylight universe. I like this as much as any other game they’ve released, and it’s pretty safe to say that their fans will find all the usual enjoyment, whilst detractors won’t be swayed.
Before I set off in earnest, the Dead by Daylight link is quite lost on me. I have a vague knowledge of the lore that an entity is forcing people to try and survive trials against brutal killers, but that’s about it. Not being someone who plays that game means that some of the references are probably lost on me, so I’m going to be reviewing this from the perspective of someone who’s going in blind.
The story of The Casting of Frank Stone takes place across three time periods. Initially in the 1960s, Frank Stone was a serial killer eventually taken down by a local police officer named Sam. In the 1980s, a group of young people are shooting their own horror film in the abandoned steel mill that Frank operated out of. Finally, in 2024, a mysterious woman named Augustine has invited three people, each of whom own a section of that very movie so she can collect all the pieces for her own ends. Sam’s early decisions will have far reaching consequences for the groups in each time period, leading to deaths, survivals, and maybe even escape. It’s mostly deaths though. I’m not terribly competent it seems.
It sounds convoluted, and in many ways the story is. You’ll be dealing with time travel, false memories, and alternate universes throughout the seven-or-so hours it’ll take you to reach a conclusion. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the story. The flipping back and forth between time periods worked quite well to flesh out moments that would be happening elsewhere (or should that be elsewhen?) and the connections between the characters in all three time periods play into each other effectively. Being the smarty-pants horror fan that I am, I’d determined that certain characters couldn’t possibly die as they were referenced in the future, but I was proven to be very wrong once the multiverse elements played in and suddenly all bets were off. It’s nice to be surprised in a game like this.
As you might expect, choices are the main way in which you progress the story. At various points you’ll be able to decide how to respond or which way to go. Interestingly, some choices are based on what you’ve found whilst hunting for secrets, opening up new paths that you might otherwise have missed. Your decisions will alter the course of the current scene, as well as affect the relationships between the characters, which may lead to them responding in different ways depending on how much people like each other. It’s a system that has been in most Supermassive Games’ releases, and I still like seeing where things go.
To this end, there’s a feature called the Cutting Room floor that allows you to go back to previous scenes to replay them, making different choices and finding missed collectibles. I liked having access to this and the little feature that shows what percentage of players chose each route. I intend to go back and find a few other paths just to see how differently things can play out.
You have the usual array of QTEs to contend with too, with timed button presses and button mashing as you might expect. Honestly, these didn’t happen all that often and tended not to be too challenging on the medium difficulty. In a way, that’s kind of the biggest problem with The Casting of Frank Stone. I liked the story and the choice elements, but the lack of things happening was a real drag at times. You go long periods with little to no threat as you often meander around very large spaces clearly designed for you to find collectibles, but in reality I found it quite tedious. I’m not asking for characters to be getting gored every fifteen minutes, but there’s a good four hours here with very little in the way of fear, which is pretty poor for a horror game.
In a way, I can understand this. Frank Stone is kept off camera for almost the entire game, right up until the final act, but this is a double edged sword. In a ninety minute horror film, you can get away with ⅔ of the playtime lacking the killer, but when you’re dealing with seven hours, you need something to fill that gap. The pacing is a let-down, which is a real shame, as previous releases from the team have been very strong.
Luckily, there’s an array of likeable and unlikeable characters to engage with in all that down time. Modern day movie director Linda comes across as world weary but authoritative, whilst 1980s youth Jaime just wants to get through the filming process to spend more time with his girlfriend Chris. It’s interesting to see the different versions of them that crop up over the course of the timeline and how characters who supposedly know them react. I really enjoyed watching smarmy and supposedly in-control Stan become gradually more freaked out as events spiral into madness.
The presentation is pretty much what you’d expect if you’ve played any other games from this team. The lovely environments make impressive use of lighting to draw the eye in the direction you should be travelling, but the character models are wildly mixed. Police officer Sam looks very impressive in all his scenes, regardless of how up close the camera gets, but 80s wild child Bonnie looks woeful by comparison, with an undetailed character model. Music and sound are great though, with lines delivered well in pretty much all instances. I will say there were a few technical hiccups though, with odd framerate stutters when vaulting over scenery and the occasional T-posing model. It’s nothing game breaking, but it does harm the immersion when you’re trying to ape a movie.
The Casting of Frank Stone is exactly what you expect it to be. If you’ve ever played a Supermassive Games release, you know what you’re getting and you probably already know if you’ll like this. It’s not without the usual flaws, but it is a fun time with an interesting story, and I imagine those who are into Dead by Daylight will get a kick out of the various references and collectibles. Just don’t expect it to change the face of horror gaming.
The Casting of Frank Stone is available now on PC, Xbox, and Playstation.
