page_title: Until Dawn
section_title: As a PlayStation Move title
hierarchical_section_title: Until Dawn / Development and release / As a PlayStation Move title
caption_attribution_description: English: The PlayStation Move controller, shown in hand.
context_page_description: Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive drama survival horror video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. Players assume control of eight young adults who have to survive on Blackwood Mountain when their lives are threatened. The game features a butterfly effect system in which players must make choices that may change the story. All playable characters can survive or die, depending on the choices made. Players explore the environment from a third-person perspective and find clues that may help solve the mystery.
  The game was originally planned as a first-person game for the PlayStation 3's motion controller PlayStation Move. The motion controls were dropped when it became a PlayStation 4 game. The story was written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who sought to create the video game equivalent of a slasher film. The development team took inspiration from various sources. These include the movies Evil Dead II and Poltergeist, and video games Heavy Rain, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. To ensure the game was scary, the team used a galvanic skin response test to measure playtesters' fear levels when playing it.
context_section_description: British developer Supermassive Games led the game's development, which began in 2010. Its existence was revealed after a trademark for Until Dawn was discovered. The game's creative director was Will Byles, who joined the studio in the same year. The studio began discussing an idea for a new game for the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Move accessory, which had a greater emphasis on narrative than Supermassive's previous titles like Start the Party!. The proposed game would be a horror game that resembled a slasher film and it would be designed for a younger audience that publisher Sony Computer Entertainment had courted with the Move. Supermassive hired American writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, both of whom had worked on horror movies, to write the game's script. They were hired because Byles felt the company's British writers wrote in a "parochial" way that is inappropriate for the horror genre.
  The game was initially exclusive to PlayStation Move, meaning players needed to buy the Move controller to functionally play the game. In this version of the game, the only way to navigate and progress the game is by moving the motion controller. Moving the wand guides the movement of the flashlight held by the characters as players explore the location from a first-person perspective. The wand can also be used to interact with objects and solve puzzles. In this version of the game, players can occasionally wield a firearm.
  A segment of the game shown at Gamescom 2012 received positive comments from the gaming community. Byles said the enthusiastic response was due to the game's unique tone, which was thought to be "fresh" compared with that of its competitors. One of the most common complaints received was the game's status as a Move exclusive; most people did not want to purchase a controller for the game. At that time, the game had reached the alpha development stage. Byles experimented with the game's debug camera and realized the potential of changing the perspective to third-person. This would change the game from a first-person adventure game to a more "cinematic" experience. The game also switched platform from PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4 and expanded the game's scope to include more mature content. Sony approved the idea and allowed the team to develop for the PS4 and changed the game's genre. According to Ashley Reed of GamesRadar, the changes in gameplay gave more "space to let the score, character personalities, camera work, and settings shine through". Most characters were also recast; Brett Dalton, one of the actors retained from the PlayStation 3 version, said he believed that the recasting was performed to hire better-known actors.
  With these changes, the team partnered with Cubic Motion and 3Lateral to motion capture the actors' performances. The team also needed to change the game's graphics. They used the Decima engine created by Guerrilla Games and had to rework the lighting system. The team also extensively used particle effects and volumetric lighting to light up the game's environments. Despite the third-person perspective, the game adopted a static camera angle in a way similar to early Resident Evil games. The approach was initially resisted by the development team because the designers considered the camera "archaic". Byles and the game's production designer Lee Robinson, however, drew storyboards to ensure each camera angle had narrative motivations and prove their placements were not random. Initially, quality assurance testers were frustrated with the camera angle; Supermassive resolved this complaint by ensuring drastic camera transitions would not occur at thresholds like doors but the team had to remove some scenes to satisfy this design philosophy.
caption: The game was initially designed for the PlayStation Move motion controller for the PlayStation 3.
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