Dead by Daylight – Five Nights at Freddy’s Chapter — Jumpscaringly Good

Dead By Daylight is entering its ninth year, a surprisingly long time for a live service game in today’s day and age. It offers something special to the video game market that means it has, essentially, no competition. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th are some notable examples of competitors, but nothing has stuck around long enough to really challenge its crown.

One of the biggest reasons for this is their licensed chapters. Chapters are how DLC is named in Dead by Daylight, usually bringing either a new survivor, killer or both, as well as new cosmetics and a map. Previous chapters have included such horror legends as Micheal Myers from Halloween, Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street, Demogorgon from Stranger Things, and the Xenomorph from Alien.

Now, Five Nights at Freddy’s joins the roster of characters, giving us Springtrap, known in game as The Animatronic. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror franchise built around a simple concept; You are a security guard watching over a Chuck E Cheese style Pizzeria, making sure nothing gets in or out. But years ago, a killer murdered children and stuffed their bodies into the animatronics, making them sentient and hungry for blood. As the player, you must use security cameras to locate the animatronics coming to kill you, as well as closing your doors to keep them out. Naturally this is a very simplified version of the game (as it has evolved over the years), but this is the formula you need to know if you’ve never played the games before.

Springtrap is the killer who did this, killed by one of his own murder weapons, and pulled into the fog to torture us. In Dead by Daylight, each killer has a unique power that sets them apart from the others and this power usually compliments them very well. Springtrap’s transition from his franchise to here is absolutely fantastic. He has two parts to his power. The first, he spawns a set of doors across the map that both Springtrap and the survivors can access. These doors allow both killer and survivor to teleport across the map after a brief animation; but if both killer and survivor use the doors at the same time, Springtrap will immediately pick the survivor up with a unique jumpscare, eliminating the need to even attack them!

These doors also have cameras attached to them, which the survivors can use to look around and find him. If they do, they can reveal his position to the entire survivor team, taking away the guessing game of his location for several crucial seconds. The second part of Springtrap’s power is his Fire Axe. He can throw this at survivors and embed it in them to injure, prompting survivors to remove it. If they do not and Springtrap gets close enough, he can rip the axe out himself, grabbing the survivor and jumpscaring them, picking them up with the need to down them, saving him time.

So, here comes the big question: How is he to play? Well, considering this chapter is bringing in an awful lot of new players (which is fantastic), this factor is perhaps more important than anything. I have at least a thousand hours in Dead by Daylight (although mostly as a survivor) so playing as a killer is a fairly alien situation for me. Conclusion? Springtrap feels incredible. He has a very strong power that is easy to understand, and has a good ranged attack that can interrupt survivors looping (or running you around infinitely), without too much of a learning curve.

I wanted to touch briefly on the map as well, as well as Springtrap’s cosmetics, as these reflect his franchise just as well as his implementation into the game. The map itself is based on the pizzeria you play at inside in the series, using the logo and exterior from the recent Blumhouse Movie back in 2023. The interior is very well done, taking you through the arcade, kitchens, and even the main stage with the most prominent animatronics there.

Springtrap also has a few skins from various moments in the franchise. As you can see from my screenshots, I used the Glitchtrap version of him, a version of him that was found infecting some old circuit boards and tapes and then used to build the VR game Help Wanted, developed by Steel Wool Studios, who now develops the main franchises games. Most impressively to me though, from the movie, we have a one to one skin of Matthew Lillard, the man who played Springtrap in the movies. It’s even voiced by him too; and the likeness is genuinely uncanny!

Springtrap’s addition to Dead by Daylight brings back an old comparison that I once saw on Reddit; Dead by Daylight is like Smash Brothers in a way, but it’s introducing characters your Dad might get excited to see rather than just the gaming community. He fits perfectly into the roster and gives us a good attraction for new players to keep the game going. I genuinely hope all killers feel as good as he does in the future; I might have to play killer more often if they do! 

Dead by Daylight, and, subsequently, Springtrap’s Chapter, is available now for Xbox, PS5 and PC.