Play it on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, Windows (Steam Deck OK), iOS, Android
Current goal: Stop getting teabagged
Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
For years, I’ve been a fan of Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight from the sidelines, watching friends and streamers play the game but rarely ever picking it up myself. I’ve always admired the depth of its astral horror lore and its efficient gameplay loop: solo Killers earn points by plunging a team of four Survivors into meat hooks, and Survivors earn points by pulling each other off of them and running away. But, until this month, I’ve been too afraid of playing—not because DbD actually scares me, but because I don’t want to get teabagged.
Multiplayer games already give me paralyzing performance anxiety. I’m not naturally talented at video games (except, inexplicably, 2014 action-adventure Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, in which I have despotic destructive abilities). And I’m usually too self-conscious to embarrass myself in front of strangers. My shyness increases when I notice a game’s players are, as I said earlier, prone to teabagging, or making an avatar crouch repeatedly over a character to simulate dipping their balls into their mouth. It’s not sportsmanlike. It’s strange. I don’t want DbD’s character model for Steve from Stranger Things to put invisible balls in my mouth.
But, last week, I was forced to build my tolerance. The Evil Within artist Ikumi Nakamura designed a few DbD skins earlier this year, one of which involves a historically accurate punk school girl outfit for delinquent Killer Julie. That goes too hard for me to resist it, so I finally caved the other day and gave Behaviour Interactive more of my money.
Since buying the cosmetic, I’ve tasked myself with becoming good enough to stop other people from bullying me. It hasn’t been working, but I think I could really turn things around this weekend. — Ashley Bardhan
