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One year after launching the Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, in their new horror adventure Dead Take, Surgent Studios offers a glimpse behind the curtain of the film industry.
From restrictive contracts and shady NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) to tyranny and cult-like conditions on film sets, Dead Take addresses significant injustices in the film industry. It’s a psychological thriller that can be understood as a cynical game of cat and mouse and also as a profound journey of self-discovery. Dead Take is available today for €13.99, GBP 11.99 and $14.99 on Steam and the Epic Games Store for PC.
Abubakar Salim, founder and CEO of the development studio Surgent Studios, revealed to press during a media presentation that he came up with the idea for the game during his travels to audition at posh mansions in the Hollywood Hills. Salim explained that on set, you always learn things you wouldn’t expect. With Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, EA and its “machinery” showed Surgent how to launch a game. Pocketpair Publishing, with its development background, was a partner with whom they co-developed Dead Take. Cultural differences were also taken into account. The collaboration between developers and the cast was characterized by creativity. The cast consits of the two playable protagonists Ben Starr as Vinny Monroe and Neil Newbon as Chase Lowry, as well as Jane Perry as Lia Cain and Alanah Pearce as Victoria Cross. Newbon believes that the narrative in video games has reached parity with the high quality of game mechanics. Salim has long been an admirer of the work of Sam Lake (Alan Wake II) and therefore wanted to include him in the game. The remaining supporting roles are played by renowned voice actors such as Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), Matthew Mercer (Critical Role), Travis Willingham (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order), and CDawgVA (Honkai: Star Rail). Sam Barlow’s games Her Story and Immortality inspired Dead Take. Salim thinks it would be interesting to include both Sams (Barlow and Lake) into another game.
It’s 10:10 p.m. and Chase Lowry (Neil Newbon) arrives at a luxurious abandoned mansion in the Hollywood Hills in search of his friend and actor Vinny Monroe (Ben Starr). Chase and Vinny have auditioned for film legend Duke Cain, executive producer at the film production company Lampblack Productions, for the same role of Willie in his upcoming Hollywood blockbuster The Last Voyage. While Vinny is in his late 20s and at the peak of his career, 40-year-old Chase’s career is in decline. Only one of the two can get the role and Dead Take raises the question of how far one would go for personal success.
After completing an initial combination puzzle and equipping a chip with the necessary access authorization, we explore the sprawling, multi-story mansion largely at our own pace from a first-person perspective and find USB drives containing footage that we can splice together in the editing room using the AI tool SPLAICE. The footage is made up of audition and rehearsal recordings taken from professionally shot and disturbing live-action scenes. Fittingly, the film clips are played in the movie mogul’s private screening room, which is quite atmospheric on the one hand, but requires constant backtracking on the other, unlike in Her Story or Immortality, where we can access them at any time but also can’t explore any locations. Each scene is assigned a symbol, which indicates whether the clips can be combined to unlock another short film. While the brute-force approach of trying to combine all the clips works, you quickly recognise which clips may match, but there aren’t too many clips you can create this way to begin with. Bonus videos further the lore of supporting characters.
In the home, which shows the remnants of an industry party gone wrong, we constantly find new film clips, which in exchange provide us with new objects that, after we hear a long, mysterious knock, appear as if by magic outside Duke’s home theater. These include a stack of tube TVs, like in KARMA: The Dark World, or a red light bulb, which, similar to Sam Lake’s Alan Wake II, allows us to switch to a new room—a darkroom where we’re tasked with developing a long forgotten roll of film, which we must dip into certain liquids in a specific order. This is where the advice of creator Abubakar Salim comes in: pen and paper—or properly placed screenshots—prove to be useful in solving the numerous environmental puzzles, as there’s no traditional quest log. Instead, the clues we find are automatically draped on a pinboard and connected with threads, similar to the Mind Place in Alan Wake II.
The puzzles range from easy to somewhat challenging. Even in the film clips, we can find clues such as passwords. Though, especially after the brilliant use of this stylistic element in Immortality and the interactivity of the scenes, the sequences in Dead Take sometimes feel rather static, as we stare transfixed at a virtual big screen – a concept that is at least somewhat broken up later. Dead Take keeps the HUD to a minimum, allowing us to immerse ourselves completely in the lovingly furnished rooms of the mansion, examining every corner and enjoying the eerily beautiful musical score by Ross Tregenza (Helldivers II). Dead Take repeatedly relies on shock effects, but uses jump scares relatively cautiously. Instead, the game succeeds in developing a constant feeling of unease, creating somewhat of a psychological terror. The soundscape also contributes to this – a thumping bass, baby cries, and the use of film props and the medium in a perverted form ensure that this feeling is increasingly intensified as the game progresses. Voice messages from the host and text messages from an unknown person with mysterious keywords for certain characters also contribute to this, which conveniently appear in moments when we learn more about them. We also get to recreate a film scene on a ship with mannequins, equipping them with poses and props like a rose, a Bible, or a gun, and we learn from the director’s notes on the script how everything slowly seems to be threatening to get out of control.
Especially in the second half, the game deals with sensitive topics and shows abuse of power in explicit form. Dead Take plays with striking imagery, but we repeatedly find notes and clues that give us more context for the scenes. It’s a difficult balancing act, as too much information demystifies the story and with too little it becomes blatant. Dead Take largely masters this balancing act well, but we would still like a bit more context in some scenes. For example, it’s suggested that a member of the ensemble is about to be replaced. We learn what leads to this, but too little about the effects on the individuals involved. While repeatedly not a lot happens in the game, the developers manage to surprise us with a completely new area, such as the pompous spa area, seemingly inspired by ancient Greece, with a giant Zeus statue and trident, which we have to restore to uncover even more dark secrets hidden in every corner of this estate. The intense ending is presented through live-action and playable scenes, leaving a lot of room for speculation as to what we actually experienced during the five to seven hours of play.
Surgent Studios uses Unreal Engine 5 for Dead Take, which conjures up impressive lighting and shadow effects on screen. With a little optimization, we can play Dead Take in 4K at over 60 frames per second, even with a graphics card on par with a GeForce RTX 4070. Reducing the lighting and reflection quality in particular allows for a few additional frames, and support for upscalers like TSR, Nvidia’s DLSS, and Intel’s XeSS 2, as well as Frame Generation, enhances the experience.
Final thoughts
Dead Take is a consistently exhilarating horror adventure with high-quality live-action scenes, well-written dialogue, and superb acting. The environmental puzzles are generally not very challenging, and the backtracking feels somewhat unnecessary. The number of film clips you can unlock could have been a bit higher to allow us to learn more about the game’s characters, some of whom remain somewhat opaque. The subplot regarding Duke Cain’s backstory and the scenes with his wife Lia in particular demonstrate the strength of the script and the acting skills of Jane Perry. Dead Take is primarily carried by the interplay of the two main actors and the excellent performances of Neil Newbon and Ben Starr. Chase and Vinny develop noticeably over the course of the short game. The fierce search for Vinny keeps us interested until the bitter end, despite minor flaws. We’re excited to see what Surgent Studios comes up with next, having produced two very different, high-quality games in a short space of time with the Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU and the psychological thriller Dead Take.
Dead Take was provided to us for PC by Pocketpair Publishing. We created the screenshots using this version.
