At its core, Until Dawn is an interactive teen-horror movie, the game is set at a remote ski lodge, A group of friends have been invited by their friend Josh’s to his large, isolated cabin at the top of a mountain (Ski lodge) The group had made a habit of partying at this spot, but the year before, a few of them played a nasty prank on Josh’s sister and she ran into the woods. His other sister went chasing after her and then things happen. Anyone who’s spent time with horror movies knows how much fun (and frustrating) it is to yell at the screen when characters are doing increasingly stupid things in the face of imminent and obvious danger. Until Dawn lets you be those people—finally, you can do more than yell at the screen! You make most every decision, from the trivial to the crucial, and you can even choose to put the characters in so much danger that they die, and the story carries on without them. 
Until Dawn shares a great deal in common with the PS3 mystery thriller Heavy Rain—both limit their interactions to on-screen button prompts, both rely more on the visual language of cinema than on the visual language of games, both tell stories from the perspectives of multiple protagonists, and in both, the player can let a main character die without the story grinding to a halt. Heavy Rain had issues, but I was intrigued by the way its story could be radically altered by player choice. I always suspected Heavy Rain’s approach would be a perfect fit for a horror game. Until Dawn is that game, and I’m happy to be proven right. Originally Published at http://kotaku.com/until-dawn-the-kotaku-review-1726108417
