You can now play as Nic Cage playing Nic Cage in Dead By Daylight

This year’s Summer Game Fest gave us awkward celebrity cameos aplenty, but one icon stood out from the crowd with an energy usually reserved for talk show hosts, lottery winners, and golden retrievers. Yes, Nic Cage showed up to announce he’d soon be a playable character in horror multiplayer game Dead By Daylight. And now he is, starting today.

Nic Cage plays himself, Nic Cage, a role that he’s mastered over the years. He’s currently available as a survivor in Steam’s Public Test Build, although the full Nic Cage pack is available to purchase on all platforms from July 25th. Come look at Cage’s character trailer below, featuring his fabulous and dramatic voice.

In the game’s fiction, Cage gives a performance that’s so eccentric and overwhelmingly skillful that he mistakenly summons the game’s “malevolent being of incomprehensible power.” The Entity pulls Cage into the game’s Fog – the place where all the murder happens – forcing him to survive against murderous monsters, and a few killers he’s probably familiar with from his time in Hollywood (Ghostface, Micheal Myers, Freddy, etc.)

Cage’s abilities are all – of course – themed around acting. Because he’s an actor. Cage is so good at the craft, the Plot Twist skill lets him pretend to die, recover health, and get back up again. Scene Partner lets you see the killer’s radius, and then Dramaturgy lets you run with high knees for extra speed and random effects. I’m guessing that’s a pre-performance ritual that makes sense for performers?

Nic Cage is no stranger to horror and horror-adjacent projects, from the Ghost Rider series to the brilliant Mandy horror-action film. Actually, the actor’s latest horror-comedy Renfield was spun off into a Vampire Survivors-esque auto-shooter recently, presumably with Cage’s Dracula serving as the final boss.

Dead By Daylight is dipping into the opposite direction with an upcoming film adaptation, and now I’m curious about a potential Nic Cage appearance in that, too. Put him in everything, why the hell not?