Until Dawn at 10: how Supermassive overcame Sony scepticism and used the science of fear to make a modern horror classic

“There was a big thing where Sony didn’t like the game when we released it,” Until Dawn creative director Will Byles recalls. “They really hated it in fact, and pulled all the marketing. It was really frustrating.”

It wasn’t the reception Until Dawn studio Supermassive Games was anticipating after spending half a decade developing the now-beloved cinematic horror game, but any concerns Sony might have had were quickly forgotten. When Until Dawn launched in August 2015, it was a critical and commercial hit, scaring up a legion of fans and even winning a BAFTA. Ten years later, Until Dawn is now rightfully considered a modern horror classic, fondly remembered both as a bold experiment in storytelling and a hugely entertaining game in its own right – one that still holds its own today. And with its tenth anniversary now here, we sat down with Byles to discover how it all came to be.

1.

Byles’ career had already been an eventful one by the time he joined Supermassive Games in 2010. He’d started out as an artist before moving into theatre as an actor, director, and prop maker, and it was his skill in model making that eventually took him down a different path toward animation, initially under the guidance of Paddington and Wombles animator Barry Leith, then at famed Wallace and Gromit studio Aardman.