Illfonic: Comparing Halloween to Dead by Daylight Is Like Cricket vs Baseball

Ever booted up a new horror game and instantly seen someone call it a "Dead by Daylight clone"? If so, you're not alone — and Illfonic, the studio behind Halloween: The Game, thinks that comparison is flat-out wrong.

Illfonic chief creative officer Jared Gerritzen told GameSpot that while linking every asymmetrical horror game to Dead by Daylight is an "easy" comparison to draw, it's inherently flawed. His analogy? "It's literally cricket versus baseball," he said. "It's so easy to see an image of cricket and say it's exactly like baseball; it's like, really, is it? No, it's not."

Fair point. Illfonic isn't new to this space at all. Before Halloween, the studio worked on Friday the 13th, Predator: Hunting Grounds, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. As Gerritzen puts it, the team makes a game "bespoke for that franchise, for that group of horror fans, and for the people who love that monster." Other studios, he says, make something more like "mixtapes" — which have their own merits, but aren't the same thing.

That distinction matters to him. "How could you not want something that is built purely for Halloween?" he asked. "If you're a horror fan, if you're a Halloween fan, how would you just be okay with it being a secondary piece?" For Illfonic, it's not enough to drop a killer in as a playable character — they want to build Haddonfield, build Michael Myers, and build his abilities around the characters fans already love.

Gerritzen also pushed back on the doom-and-gloom crowd who wrote Halloween off before launch. "How many Illfonic-published games [have shut down]?" he asked rhetorically — and the answer is none. Friday the 13th was shuttered due to a rights issue, but Illfonic didn't publish it. The studio's other horror titles are still running today. He recalled hearing the same skepticism with Predator, Ghostbusters, and Killer Klowns. "All we have to do is prove you wrong," he said, pointing to Predator's 30-plus predators and Klowns' ongoing content. "It's not like Illfonic has ever shut a server down [or] closed down shop."

His advice for horror fans juggling a packed genre? Don't pick sides. "If you're a horror fan, you should consume everything," he said, comparing it to someone claiming they'd only watch movies from a single director. "Come on. No, you're not. You're gonna watch everything."

Halloween: The Game is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. So, are you treating it as its own thing, or do you still see it as another DBD rival? Will you be picking it up?