When "Dead By Daylight" was released in 2016, it was as a ridiculously silly Halloween pastime, a game to enjoy with friends who wanted to indulge in a brief and terrifying blood spree before moving on to other, more sophisticated multiplayer experiences. Accepted. The premise is simple: four players become survivors of a "Saw"-like bloodbath, repairing a generator to power an exit gate and rushing to safety; a fifth player is a killer, either adopted whole from a prominent horror franchise or heavily inspired by it. The job of the killer is to prevent survivors from escaping, impaling them on a horrific meat hook and leaving them under the control of a mysterious eldritch force known only as the "Entity." It's a cinematic murder simulator, pure camp with flamboyant slasher delight; no one would have predicted that Dead By Daylight would grow into the best cooperative/competitive multiplayer game ever made. [In the five years since Behaviour Interactive released Dead by Daylight on Steam, the game has developed a sharp mechanical intrigue, an ultra-complex web of builds and strategies, and a diverse cast of characters with relative strengths and weaknesses. What was once a comedic horror romp has morphed into something much closer to League of Legends or Dota 2 in terms of depth. While it may be perplexing to think that hardcore players will spend months scrutinizing the relative power levels and optimization paths of "Scream's" ghost faces, "Dead By Daylight" in early 2021 will be the latest in a long line of games that Freddy Krueger, Bubba Sawyer, and Michael It's a venture worthy of esports hosted by Myers.

Dead By Daylight started with three unique killers and a quartet of survivors. While their unique abilities oozed personality - Hillbilly, for example, could wield a chainsaw and go on a murderous sprint - the gauntlet was predictable due to the inflexibility of the registered members. No one likes a villain who never changes his cunning plan, right? But as of this writing, "Dead by Daylight" features 22 killers and 24 survivors, each offering radically different means.

You'll be pitted against the Huntress, a killer in a bloody bunny mask, dodging the hatchets she wields across a wide swath of the battlefield. Or perhaps she will face off against the famous Pyramid Head. That pyramid head, which appeared in Silent Hill, can trap its prey in a "cage of atonement."

Players can attach complex perks and inventory add-ons to their chosen character to reduce cooldowns, increase the effectiveness of certain abilities, and ensure that there is always a last move. It is not uncommon for one player to recognize a tough matchup against a named killer in a teamfight and use the reagent to increase his or her game-winning percentage by selecting a specific map that appears to be a disadvantage to the opponent. This is the ultra-competitive MOBA or FPS-like tussle, hedging, and pre-match sizing up, somehow filtered through a beer-and-pretzel horror game.

If you've never played Dead By Daylight, it may seem like overkill. It's easy to get tired of what I would call "progression creep" in modern gaming: every time you launch something new on Steam, multiple piles of in-game currency in the upper right corner of the screen, daily login bonuses exploding in the menu, flash sales glittering in the store and so on, you are thrown into a quagmire of poor systems that make the pre-MMO era of everything seem exceptionally sweet. To be sure, Dead By Daylight is under a lot of managerial pressure. The multiple experience tracks, unlocks, and talent trees are the reason for this. But I also think it's worth the pressure. It's a League of Legends-style obsession to fiddle with runes for hours before entering the lunetera.

The importance of such subtle choices becomes clear when you start playing against people who actually know what they're doing; the lowest levels of Dead by Daylight are as rough as they are fascinating. There are survivors running around like chickens with their heads cut off and clumsy killers who can't even land a blow with a machete. But the true complexity of Behavior's design becomes apparent as one climbs the MMR.

Killers are sneaky and ruthless, but they play from a first-person perspective and have limited vision. The smart survivors, all equipped with third-person cameras, know that the best way to escape them is to find what the community calls "the loop." The killers chase around in that loop in vain, realizing that despite their best efforts, it is always just out of reach. Eventually, the killer becomes adept at using the loop. 'She thinks I'm going to chase her through the door again. What if, instead, I feinted that I was headed that way and instead turned around and caught her when she jumped out the window?" [It's like "Street Fighter" or "Tekken," where victory depends on an innate understanding of what your opponent is trying to do. It's most exhilarating when you build up a barrage of counters to the ceiling, until one player makes a wrong move or unleashes a decisive blow. Few sensations are as satisfying on the PC right now.

Funny: Dead By Daylight remains a horror game, and while there is a paranoid thrill in sneaking around the swamps and fixing generators, the more you learn about the system, the less scary it becomes. High-level players simply get too good at it and don't play it the way it was played back in 2016.

Let me give you an example. In every round, the survivor finds a specific passage equipped with a wooden pallet. By throwing that pallet at the killer in the middle of his pursuit, he can impede his progress or, if the timing is right, even stall him. It's a smart quirk and fits the "Dead By Daylight" conceit. However, I often see survivors camped out in front of a pallet, staring directly at the stalker, waiting for it to come across the invisible line. Boom. They take a few sips of tea before disappearing into the darkness. It's a clever strategy, mechanically speaking, but not as terrifying as "Dead By Daylight" first evoked.

Similarly, assassins can specifically target a single survivor over and over again to eliminate them from the game, reducing their numbers disadvantage as early as possible. Again, while this is a sound approach, it does not feel respectful of the original work. If they did the same thing in a tabletop RPG, they would be reprimanded by the dungeon master.

What you get depends on who you play with, but that's part of the beauty of "Dead By Daylight" and its tightly knit heritage. As much as I admired the exhilarating tactical dynamism of the competitive scenes, the game is equally enjoyable among friends (who may be playing for the first time) who are just foolish enough to want to get away from Leatherface on a Saturday night. In that case, the lofty game-theoretical intrigue of "Dead By Daylight" becomes a distant afterthought, and the only thing that matters is the whispering between you and your brother as you slip past the killer unnoticed.

I can't think of many other games that combine both sides of this dichotomy: "League" and "Overwatch" are so imposingly precise that they can't condone poor play, and "Dota 2" can't let a newbie play without showing them an hour-long tutorial video. It's impossible to get them to play. On the other hand, "Dead By Daylight" manages to do both admirably, insisting on a rich competitive environment without abandoning the fun of a bloody slasher film. It is both a Halloween parody and a Hereditary psychodrama. This is a blockbuster.