The Casting of Frank Stone was never intended to be GOTY material, but its underrated formula for crowd-pleasing collaborations is something we wish we saw more often.

When I started compiling my shortlist of 2024 GOTY nominees earlier this fall – an attempt to sort through the jumbled mix of widely agreed-upon hits that still have to be played, I was going to take my guns out – Frank Stone’s Casting It easily cleared my personal top 10, and was quite clear in the latter category.

Of course, this game would never sell in my case. As far as I know, Supermassive Games’ horror output comes in only three flavors: “good,” “great,” and “amazing.” Literally the only time I had a really bad time with any of their games was when Little Hope ended. And even then, I got over it pretty quickly.

And while the amount of time I’ve spent playing Dead by Daylight is certainly less than the amount of time I’ve spent obsessively digging into the lore surrounding the game, I still think it’s enough to call me a fan. So a Dead by Daylight story mode-style spinoff developed by Supermassive was a no-brainer for me.

I wasn’t expecting a huge shock. The promise of a The Dark Pictures Anthology-style Dead by Daylight story was already enough to hook me. But Frank Stone somewhat failed to set the world on fire when it was released on September 3 (which, as it happens, means we share a birthday). small I’m biased), but I’m still pleasantly surprised by how much I rate it. To be honest, it might be in my top 3 Supermassives of all time.

Frank Stone’s casting is both interesting and grim. It charts the intertwined fates of five playable protagonists across three different time periods. It all leads to a series of historic murders in the town of Cedar Hills, Oregon, and the subsequent release of a no-budget student film inspired by the events. Just finding out what’s actually happening is enough to keep you on your toes throughout the game. It has a Spades vibe and a fair amount of variety in choose-your-own-adventure gameplay, but at its core it’s 100% for lore enthusiasts.

Perhaps most damaging of all is the fact that Frank Stone’s casting ends up being a brutal narrative punch that can only land if you’re at least somewhat familiar with Dead by Daylight’s broader universe. I don’t think this is a failure of the game. I believe the game achieved exactly what it set out to do and told a story that will captivate fans of the parent series (pun completely intended). But when I think about how this work came about and then disappeared with relatively little fanfare, I suspect that this may be a big part of the reason why.

Still, in an entertainment world where smaller artists are suffocated by petty disputes due to cynical brand marriages between the biggest purses and brutal copyright takedowns, it’s safe to say that on the one hand, I want to. Check out more collaborations like The Casting of Frank Stone. You get the chance to have two studios meet organically at the intersection of their respective specialties and see what kind of shenanigans result from the mashup. That kind of collaboration, which comes from artistic compatibility rather than financial incentive, feels so rare that it’s practically retro in and of itself.

So even if The Casting of Frank Stone isn’t for everyone, I’d like to see more games adopt this pattern in the future. And if your two favorite games are, say, Dead by Daylight and Until Dawn, there’s a good chance that these will end up being your own custom GOTYs. Actually, that’s pretty much my game.