Dead by Daylight is just weeks away from celebrating its ninth anniversary, so developer Behaviour Interactive is rolling out the party favor fans have begged to see for years: Five Nights at Freddy’s. A Chapter based on Scott Cawthon’s legendary animatronic horror series will finally, officially arrive in Dead by Daylight June 17, marking the end of a long wait and the beginning of another year of more crossovers, quality-of-life fixes, and more. It’s a collaboration years in the making, and we got a first look at how it’s shaping up.
IGN sat down to interview Dead by Daylight Creative Director Dave Richard and Killer Designer Jason Guzzo ahead of the upcoming Chapter’s public test build (PTB), which launches today at 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET, to learn more about how this latest collaboration stays true to the looks and lore of Five Nights at Freddy’s. Alongside learning more about how the new Killer, Springtrap, uses doors, cameras, and jump scares to terrorize Survivors, our chat revealed more details about some of the other horror icons Behaviour would love to add and exactly how much Markiplier they watched to prepare for the new update.
Eager Nintendo Switch 2 fans will also be happy to know that Behaviour confirmed with IGN separately that Dead by Daylight’s startup issues on the device will be resolved by the time the new console launches next week, June 5. Meanwhile, the team has an explanation behind why they opted out of including a new Survivor this time around, but if we’re lucky, Freddy Fazbear’s time in Dead by Daylight is just getting started.
IGN: Heading into the PTB, how are you feeling about how Springtrap looks and feels to play compared to other past Killers in previous PTBs.
Dave Richard: Jason will be able to answer that in more details, because, of course, he’s the main designer on this. I feel excited. I feel confident. We know that this is the top-requested franchise and Killer. It has been for many, many years, so a little bit stressed as well. There’s a lot of hype, there’s a lot of expectation, but the team did great to be authentic and to create a very, very cool Five Nights at Freddy’s experience within the Dead by Daylight metrics.
Jason Guzzo: I mean, I think Dave put it pretty well, I have not been at behavior for 23 years and on DBD since the beginning, so I think my stress is a little higher than his. For him, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is just part of the, part of the flow.’ But for me, this is, this is my third Killer. So yes, I did Chucky and Dracula previously, but being able to kind of be trusted with FNaF on DBD was so awesome. I’m really excited about it. It takes us almost a year to do a Killer, so it’s really cool to finally be able to say, like, ‘Oh, here’s what we’re doing,’ and everybody can see it and play with it and let us know… hopefully their view on it aligns with ours, and hopefully they love it as much as we did.
Just reading over some of the details I saw beforehand, this seems so authentic to Five Nights at Freddy’s and what the gameplay is in that series, which I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect to see doors, cameras, and even jump scares. Were there discussions about playing as other animatronics, or was it always Springtrap the team had their eyes on?
Richard: Obviously, it’s not something we can answer easily on, like, all the inner workings that we have with our different partners. There were many, many iterations of what this Chapter could be, and we ended up here, and it’s great, and that’s all I can share.
This is the first time players get to play a spring trap in a video game, which I’m sure for the Five Nights at Freddy’s community is huge. Can you talk about what it’s like creating original gameplay for this character with such a limited blueprint to base things off of?
Guzzo: That’s a great question. Really, like, as you implied, the gameplay from FNaF is very different from DBD – drastically different. So really, the goal was to say, ‘What’s the experience of FNaF? What the – my favorite word in the whole world – what’s the vibe? That’s the millennial word: ‘What’s the vibe?’ So, I mean, I watched, no joke, about 70 hours of content. I won’t name names, but the king of FNaF. Everybody knows who it is.
Richard: Shoutout to Markiplier. Yeah!
Guzzo: [Laughs] I mean, I love him now. I hadn’t really watched him before, and now I’ve watched so much of his FNaF stuff, and I’m subscribed. I watch all of his new videos and stuff. It won me over. But no, it was really cool to be able to kind of see, not only just the gameplay. I’m going to be honest: I don’t love jump scares as a player. I love horror movies. Horror games with jump scares… I’m a bit of a baby about it, but it was cool to not only just watch the gameplay, but watch, of course, the streamers’ reactions and the people playing it in the community.
When you watch people playing live, you see the community interacting. Also, just seeing what people react to… because you can make a game like FNaF, and you go, ‘Oh, it’s all going to be jump scares,’ and people just kind of ignore that, and they kind of focus on something else. So, being able to watch somebody play, and watch people play, and read all the lore – because Five Nights at Freddy’s lore is crazy – and just say like, ‘Well, what are people reacting to, and how can we kind of adapt that to into the context of DBD?’ There was a lot of back and forth.
There was a lot of cooks in this kitchen on this Chapter because everybody has ideas for FNaF. It’s the big one. Everybody wanted to make sure that it was as authentic as possible, and, of course, everything went through Mr. Scott Cawthon. So, yeah, it was really cool to do all that research and take a ton of notes and say, ‘What can we mess with and what can we do, and how can we enhance DBD with a flavor – or with the vibe – and the experience of FNaF.
Richard: I have to jump back to the very start of that question, when you talk about the announcement and how people reacted. I had the chance to reveal it was Springtrap at PAX, and in that room there was almost 1000 people, and they shouted so loud that the floor was shaking. It was just… it just amazing.
It’s super exciting and a big moment for everyone right now. I spoiled it a little bit, but can you guys give me more detail about what players can expect from Springtrap in the PTB, a little more specifically? How does your version of this Killer and that new map do the character justice?
Richard: Jason, that’s all for you. I just want to say real quick that, going back to your previous question, you know, the task that the team had was quite challenging. To distill that vibe and to have the mechanics of a single-player experience where you’re the Survivor transformed into that duality, that you can create that fear, or you can experience it in another kind of way, in a very different kind of game. Before we jump into the mechanics of it, absolutely, we wanted jump scares. That’s part of the vibe. Absolutely we wanted to create these moments of hunting corridors and of surveillance. Then the thing I’m really happy about, and Jason, you’ll be able to describe, but that whole door thing was not an afterthought, but it was a thing that you came up with afterwards, and it made it through, and it’s absolutely brilliant.
Guzzo: Wow. The creative director, calling me brilliant [laughs].
Richard: You can end the interview now.
Guzzo: [Laughs] So, he is primarily a projectile Killer. The power kind of comes in two flavors. There’s two halves of it. I’m gonna attempt to ramble and go on tangents a little bit, but I promise I’ll get to where I need to be in a second. One of the things that I wanted to do with this one was, as mentioned, FNaF is like a Survivor game, right? In the context of DBD, you’re playing from the Survivor’s point of view. You’re sitting in the security office, and you’re managing the battery, and you are trying not to get yourself killed. So, I wanted to kind of step back and say, ‘How can we enhance the Survivor side of the gameplay for this Chapter?’ Because that’s kind of what people know from FNaF.
Obviously, we couldn’t just say, ‘Oh yeah, all four people stand still and open and close doors and manage a battery’ – that’s not DBD. What we came upon was the idea of, ‘Well, the security doors, they’re pretty iconic, and obviously the security office is super iconic.’ Where we landed was that the security office is this transitional space for both Survivors and Killers. There are doors that are spawned around the map. Each has a camera and a number. So, you know kind of which camera is which or which door is which.
Survivors, when they interact with the door, they’re given the camera view with the battery, and they see the little map of the cameras in the corner. You can flip through them, see what’s on the other side of any door. If you find a door that you like, if it looks safe on the other side, or if you’re going to save somebody, or whatever it is, you can hit our input and you get a little canned animation, almost like a cinematic. It’s not pre-rendered or anything, but it’s very hands-off. I kind of equate it to a super short theme park ride, where you see, in first-person, your Survivor walks through the security office and looks around, and it’s spooky. Then the door opens on the other end of the room, and you leave, and then now you’re on, potentially, the other side of the map. It’s basically a teleport, but it’s very thematic.
The trick here is that even though it’s a safe space – or it feels like a safe space – it is not. The Killer doesn’t have access to the cameras but can enter the doors and can look around at any of the other doors he likes and teleport to it. He gets the same thing: He gets kind of a movement through the security office, but if his path happens to cross paths with a Survivor, they get a little jump scare, and he grabs them, and he walks out of the door, carrying them. It feels really thematic, and the animation is so good. It’s so good. The anim team killed it. The first thing I said was, ‘Can we do a grab Killer?’ We have melee and M1 Killers. We have range Killers. Can we just do a Killer that’s all based around grabs? Because grabs in DBD are inherently kind of jump scares. We wanted to lean into that a little bit. Obviously, it’s not the only thing you can do – that’d be kind of boring – but we did lean into those kinds of things.
With the other half of his power is his projectile. He has a big old fire axe that he can lob. It’s a very unique arc. It’s not like anything we’ve ever done with a projectile Killer before. It’s not built for sniping. It’s not designed around sniping. It’s not balanced around sniping. It’s really to do some really gnarly trick shots, and we’ve already had some people pulling off some crazy things internally. It’s been really fun to watch. We wanted to marry those two things with the door gameplay, and ‘How can we expand on that, and how can we expand on this idea of him being the grab Killer?’ One of the things that we did is, if you hit a Survivor with your projectile, you can chase them down, and you hit M1, and really, I mean, it’s a thematic thing. We’re basically just skipping a step. Normally, they would fall down, and you would pick them up, but we’re doing that all in one shot. You get in close, and you hit your basic attack, and Springtrap very violently grabs the axe, spins you around, you get a nice little jump scare animation, and then he’s carrying you.
The axe functions in a couple of different ways: He can disable cameras and doors and get a little bit of an AoE with stuff, but that’s all my tangents to describe the whole Power. We really did our best to be as authentic as possible when it came to both sides of the aisle, so to speak, when it comes to the Survivor experience of using these cameras and sneaking through these doors and seeing the security office and still being this menacing, lumbering beast. You can’t even call him a man or a robot. He’s a monster, right? We tried to be as authentic as possible in making him feel like he’s both pretty stompy and loud, but also can show up right behind you and – Boo! You know what I mean? [laughs].
It’s going to be really interesting to see Springtrap marry Five Nights at Freddy’s into Dead by Daylight itself. When you guys were coming up with ideas for Springtrap, was the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 movie something the team had to keep in consideration? Was Behaviour able to pull any elements from that film or the first film when creating its version of its character?
Richard: Great question, and the answer is no. Actually, it was all about, for us, the classic experience of the game, especially the first titles, that we wanted to recreate. We often go for that in Dead by Daylight, as you can see. We go for the classics. What creates a little bit of nostalgia as well, and then make it more modern, or whatever it requires to be in Dead by Daylight in today’s flavor. Of course, the movie was out, the first installment, and it is also based a lot on that aspect, with some changes, but we were really focused on the games.
So, at what point during conversations with Scott Cawthon, did you both say we’ve got to get Matthew Lillard in here for this?
Richard: It actually came directly from Scott. We had discussion about the different outfits that we could create for Springtrap. It’s a discussion we have with partners all the time, like, ‘What’s your comfort level? We want to respect that. Do you want us to create new outfits like the Blight, or do you want to keep to the specific? Do we have the rights to this and that,’ etc., and he actually suggested it. We were thinking, ‘We have to stick to the games,’ and he said, ‘Oh, we absolutely need the Yellow Rabbit from the movie. That would be awesome.’ Like, f**k yeah. Yeah, it would. Then having, on top of that, Matthew Lillard’s participation and being able to – I didn’t personally hang out with him – but part of the team did, and he’s just fantastic to work with. He’s done fantastic work on making this character alive in our game. It’s just awesome.
Guzzo: I mean, he’s an icon, right?
A horror icon in the game, portraying this massive character.
Richard: Yeah, I mean, if you if you squint… maybe you’re Shaggy [laughs].
Moving over to a different topic now, I’ve seen some express disappointment that this next Chapter doesn’t come with a Survivor. Can you talk about whether there were ever conversations about including a Survivor and why you ultimately chose not to include one this time around?
Richard: Yeah, absolutely. So, in early discussion in our planning, and how we wanted to tackle this Chapter and what we had access to when we started this, having a Survivor was, for many reasons, challenging and not a perfect fit that we wanted to make happen. So, yes, I understand the disappointment, like, 100%, but in our mind, we were in the first game, where, at that point in the story, security is anyone. It’s the player. It’s you, right?
We know that this evolves in the FNaF timeline to something else, but that’s kind of the vibe we’re going for. I’d like to say… maybe we’ll get the chance to do it eventually, or do something else. I definitely think that would be really cool, especially [knowing that] FNaF is vast. It’s a large franchise, and that’s something we’ve done before, with big licenses. We’ve done more content after the first release. So, maybe that would be a possibility. That’d be cool.
Dead by Daylight will let players freely run and hide around Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant. Without spoilers, can you talk about some of the details in the map that you’re proud of and excited to see players uncover in the PTB?
Richard: The map is truly amazing. It’s one of those buildings that we faithfully recreated, of course, in the metrics of Dead by Daylight. It’s comparable to [Raccoon City Police Station] as in it exists. It’s something that players already lived in some ways, without necessarily roaming around in that fashion. Being able to do so and to see that in the contemporary fashion and the DBD style is a lot of fun. We’ve packed it with surprise, and yeah, I’m not spoiling anything, but there’s a lot of you know hints about the lore of FNaF, about cool moments that happen. There are some extra jump scares in there. There’s a lot of a little surprises like this. You know, we aim to delight with this level of detail, and this one serves.
I saw Behaviour mention in another interview that it took some time to make the Five Nights at Freddy’s collaboration happen for so many different reasons. Part of what took so long involved a desire from both Cawthon and the Dead by Daylight team to establish what was important and how to please fans on both sides. Can you talk about what that process was like and which elements took the longest to nail down?
Richard: I can’t, I can’t answer this. I don’t have the knowledge of it. If [Game Director Mathieu Cote] was here, you would be able to say so. But usually, we don’t also talk about the process with partners.
This is the collaboration fans have wanted to see for so long. How do you feel about the reception so far, and what is it like for the team specifically to finally give this to players who have been asking for it?
Guzzo: What else can you say other than it’s amazing? Obviously, people are, I don’t want to say nervous, but there’s always a bit of trepidation when you work hard on something, and then you’re putting it out into the world. We all know people on the internet have opinions, but overall, we’re all really excited. We’ve been staring at this for, you know, 40-plus hours a week for almost a year, and we’ve played it to death. We’re just excited to, not necessarily even see how people feel about it, because, you know, you’re never going to make everybody happy, but more like, see how people explore it.
As a game designer, I like to approach my designs as like… I want to give you tools to play with and figure out and kind of make your own moment-to-moment. That’s a big thing that we talk about with DBD a lot – those moment-to-moment… moments. Those moments that you talk with your friends about. ‘Oh, do remember when that happened, and this happened,’ etc, etc. So, we really wanted to make sure that, like I said, with like the extra Survivor gameplay, we wanted to give players the tools to really have a lot of those super fun, cool moments and the jump scares and the laughs. That’s the best part; when we do a play test and I’m sitting and watching people play and they’re laughing and s**t-talking each other, that’s when I know I’ve succeeded, personally. As soon as people don’t talk about bugs or whatever, because, you know, bugs come up, and they’re just focused on having fun and laughing and calling each other names and everybody’s joking around… that’s when the magic happens.
It’s cool to see it internally, and then when we put it out there, go on Twitch or YouTube or whatever it is, and just watching people have those moments on kind of a much bigger scale. So yeah, the team is super excited, obviously. We’ve also been waiting to do this for 10 years, right? It’s not just the community that’s been waiting for it. We’ve been waiting to do it. So, it’s cool that we’re finally able to do it, and we can kind of bring that to the community.
Richard: I’ve been there a little bit longer, obviously, on the project, and I was talking with other colleagues yesterday, and they actually asked a similar question. They’re like, ‘Well, OK, so now you’ve done it. What’s next? Is this the top?’ Then, I was reflecting, I’m like, ‘Well, pretty much every Chapter we do in, the latest and greatest is the most important thing we’re working on.’ I understand that FNaF is huge, and it’s been highly requested, and after it, there’s going to be a new top request, and there’s still a lot of universes to explore. Either they’re original or they’re licenses, so this will happen again. We’re definitely not done.
When did Five Nights at Freddy’s first come up as a topic for you guys, where you said ‘We’d love to have this in Dead by Daylight.’
Richard: For me, I wouldn’t be able to target the year exactly, but I didn’t know Markiplier, and I was actually… this is a long story. I’m going to try and make it short. So, I wasn’t watching a lot of streamers, and a colleague just said, ‘Oh, you should look at the videos that Markiplier does. He’s really funny.’ Of course, I watched FNaF videos, and this is where I actually learned a lot about FNaF, that I was really interested in the franchise, that I learned about Markiplier. I had a lot of fun with it, and it triggered this idea, and this want. Then it really solidified when the community started asking for it.
So, it wasn’t even necessarily like everybody was clamoring for Five Nights at Freddy’s. It almost started just from organically seeing Markiplier.
Richard: I have to say that this is a very personal view on the matter. Of course, what I do on the project, I look around on anything horror to get inspired by it. So, I can’t say that when I saw Markiplier play, it was like, ‘Yes, this needs to be in DBD, and the power should be like that.’ Absolutely not because it was very early on, and DBD at that point was… what’s the word. We were less on the team, and of course, big things like FNaF were not necessarily as possible, but when it crystallized into something that we needed to do, it definitely was because the community was asking for it. Yes.
Is there a crossover that members of the Dead by Daylight team would love to see happen? NO restraints.
Richard: There’s a few that Mathieu Cote already said that we like to say because they’re kind of obvious. You know, Pennywise would be amazing. There are other kings of horror that would be amazing to have. You could guess any one of them, I’m thinking. Frankly, I just want to collect them all.
Guzzo: Dave treats DBD like Pokémon [laughs]. Just to be clear, this isn’t a hint about something that is being worked on. As far as I know, it’s not something that is being discussed above me, but my dream – and probably my favorite horror movie – is the obvious one: The Thing. I would love to get The Thing into DBD. I have been here for two and a half years, and I have been on a crusade to figure out how to get The Thing into DBD.
It has a lot of potential design problems. It’s an internal thing of trying to figure out how to make that character work, but yes, that would be my… I don’t want to say my dream Chapter because every Chapter has been a dream so far. I got to do Chucky and Dracula and Springtrap. I don’t know who on this team gets to talk about being on some of the biggest licenses on the planet, but The Thing is the one that I am on a crusade to get done at some point.
Richard: That’s really cool. Yeah, it’d be a nice one. The other ones that we always share, too… they could be mostly a joke, but I think there’s a way to make it work, especially now in the timeline: Cujo. Christine.
A popular theory floating around about an upcoming Chapter involves some faded letters on a recent roadmap you published. Have you seen this theory floating around, and is there any chance we could get you to comment on it?
Richard: I haven’t seen it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about the upcoming PTB, Five Nights at Freddy’s, or the future of Dead by Daylight?
Richard: So many things. Jason, I’ll let you start. It’s your baby.
Guzzo: We love this game. We love the franchise. If you love FNaF, we want you to feel welcome to coming into DBD and seeing what we have to offer. I’m going to be honest: It might not be the Chapter that you think it is. I think it being so requested and so loved by the community for so long that there have been… trust me, I did the research, there is a lot of really interesting and cool community concepts on how we could have done FNaF.
Richard: And we can only do one.
Guzzo: And we can only do one, and obviously I’m not just going to be like, ‘Oh, this guy, JoeSmith123 on Reddit has a really good idea, let’s just steal that.’ It might not be the Chapter you expected, but know that we went in not just to make something that, like, ‘Oh this is like the big one. We’re going to sell a million – a billion billion billion copies of this DLC,’ or whatever. We went in wanting to be as authentic as possible and, with Survivors having a little bit extra gameplay in this Chapter, we really wanted to make sure we were authentic to the franchise but also honor the community of that game, and make sure they understand that, when you come to DBD, you might recognize the faces, but you’re going to get a new experience.
I hope everybody likes it. I genuinely do. I don’t do this because it’s an easy job. I don’t do this because it’s glamorous – although I get to do an interview with IGN, I guess that’s pretty glamorous to be honest [laughs] in terms of being a game dev – but I do it because I love horror. I’ve been a horror fan my whole life. Working on a horror game is very literally a dream come true, even though, as mentioned before, I don’t really like playing scary games because I’m a big baby, but I love working on them and I love the genre. I try to watch new horror movies two or three times I week, and my wife has to also watch them, too bad for her [laughs]. Just understand that this is coming from a place of love and a place of respect as much as possible. I hope everybody loves it. I hope everybody loves playing it as much as I loved working on it. I think that’s the best way I can put it.
Richard: Good stuff.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
