Until Dawn centers around a group of eight teenagers who decide to have a holiday for a night in a cabin on the fictional Blackwood Mountain, exactly one year after the disappearance of two girls, the twin sisters of a member of their group. Shortly after arriving, the gang find themselves under attack by a madman and must attempt to survive until sunrise. Throughout the adventure, players alternate between all eight characters, making critical decisions as the story advances which drastically affects the game's outcome, leading to hundreds of different scenarios.
While playing the game, the tension of getting out the bad situations alive increases. According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, the higher the arousal, the stronger the performance. But as the problem arises while playing the game, the performance impaired because the anxiety has kicked in. The anxiety builds up as we were looking for clues for the unsolved mysteries.
This game gives an overall experience of tension, joy and horror. It is a survival game which can test our survival instinct with a lot of adrenaline rush. There were a lot of jump scares from the beginning of the game and as a player, I became more anxious when the background music increases. This usually happens when the bad guy appears as we are approaching for an exit.
From the very beginning of the game, it was obvious that this is a slasher game whereby the player must survive from being killed by an unknown entity or psychopath. Whilst avoiding from having the character being killed, the player must also try to solve the mystery of the killings of two of the characters in the game that was killed a year previously according to the timeline of the game .
Decision making played a very big part in the game as any small decisions could lead to a character being killed off or surviving the ordeal and gets to live for the rest of the game and be able to solve the mystery .This added pressure for the player as they have to be able to think quick on making decisions on the spot without knowing what the outcome will be . Throughout the game, players will make difficult decisions during ethical or moral dilemmas, such as sacrificing one character to save another. This is where the player would contemplate on whether they are making the right decisions, and may even blur the line between what is right and wrong .
The different personalities and backgrounds among the characters was fun to get to know and kept things exciting and unpredictable .The game is focused on survival , exploration ,discovering clues and solving mysteries as well as making decisions. The anticipation of wanting to know more about who the killer is and compiling the clues slowly kept us intrigued throughout the game.
