What starts as a missing-person mystery slowly unravels into something deeper – a story about performance and the blurred line between acting and being.
If you’re into slow-burn horror and the dark sides of Hollywood, Dead Take might be worth putting on your radar. Developed by Surgent Studios, Dead Take is a first-person psychological horror game set in a luxurious but unsettling Hollywood mansion. You play an actor looking for your missing friend Vinny, who vanished after a glitzy party the night before. Now the house is silent, the guests are gone, and something’s clearly off.
The Mansion As A Puzzle Box
The setup is familiar: search the creepy house, find your friend – but Dead Take puts its own spin on the formula. This isn’t just an abandoned mansion, it’s also a film set, a memory archive, and maybe even a character in its own right.
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Throughout the game, you’ll uncover corrupted video files, USB drives and memory cards, some of which can be spliced together to reconstruct what really happened inside these walls. There’s a strong meta-cinematic vibe: you’re not just watching the story unfold, you’re assembling it yourself, editing clips together to make sense of the chaos. It’s a clever mechanic, especially if you enjoy narrative games that don’t hold your hand. Every room feels like it’s performing for you. Every clue dares you to look twice. And the deeper you go, the more blurred the line becomes between fiction and reality – both in the story and in the way it’s told.
Performance, Power, And Neil Newbon’s Perfect Fit
And then there’s Neil Newbon, whose voice and face you might recognize from Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil Village or Detroit: Become Human. He has a knack for playing characters who are magnetic, ambiguous, and just the right amount of untrustworthy. He fits perfectly into a game like this – one that’s more interested in mood and mystery than jump scares or cheap shocks.
Beyond the haunted-house surface, Dead Take seems to be circling bigger themes: performance, identity, and the often grimy underbelly of the entertainment industry. There’s talk of auditions gone wrong, whisper networks, and a shadowy figure with the power to make or break your career.