Hooked on You: A Dead by Daylight Dating Sim is a spin-off of the multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight, developed by Behaviour Interactive in collaboration with Psyop. It was released on Steam on August 3rd, 2022.
The game takes place on Murderer's Island, a sunny getaway island inhabited by the various Killers of the Entity's realm. Of them, four happen to catch your eye: The Trapper, The Wraith, The Huntress and The Spirit. Now's your chance to befriend, or even romance, one of these candidates. Or get killed by them. It's up to you.
Hooked on You contains examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Neither the Trapper nor the Oni can remember Claudette and Dwight's names, and they both refer to them by miscellaneous names that start with "C" and "D", such as "Cynthia and Doug" or "Clint and Darlene". There's an element of malice in it, as they don't care to remember their names out of a lack of respect.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Very much in play with the various killers.
- The Trapper is far more muscular here, and has fewer hooks stabbing into his back and arms.
- The Huntress is less dirty, and like the Trapper, also a lot more muscular. She also has orange eyes that are now also visible, instead of being completely black. She also has MASSIVE BAZONGAS.
- The Wraith's skin appears more normal, looking more like patchy skin rather than burn marks.
- The Spirit's blank eyes are now light green, and the cut off limbs and glass shards are less bloodied.
- Amazonian Beauty: The Huntress is portrayed as even more muscular here than she is in Dead by Daylight, having large muscles only rivaled by The Trapper's build. This is complimented with a very beautiful face and a generous bust.
- And I Must Scream
- Dwight and Claudette (the former in particular) find spending eternity serving the every whim of murderous killers this. Becomes even more apparent on Huntress's, Spirit's, and Trapper's routes where we find out they can also be murdered by them and then resurrected to keep working the next day.
- The player character's fate if they don't romance Trapper completely: trapped in a dark mine shaft with his father forever.
- Bait-and-Switch: The player hears Claudette and Dwight moaning while yelling such things as "harder!" and "shove it in!" They're trying to kill themselves to escape working at the resort during their break.
- Black Comedy: As one would expect from a lighthearted game about dating bloodthirsty killers. There are jokes about cannibalism, characters' tragic backstories, torture, plain old murder, and more, all played with a level of both surreal flippancy and self-awareness that prevents tonal dissonance.
- The Cameo: Ghostface can be spotted on the oft mentioned IP Island during Huntress's route by looking through Wraith's telescope.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When you get Huntress's bad ending by heartlessly rejecting her in front of everyone, all three of the other killers gasp at your callousness, and Wraith even starts crying.
- Everyone Is Bi:
- Your potential love interests consist of two male and two female killers, all of whom are interested in getting with you, and clearly none of whom care about your gender. Same thing applies to the Trickster, who's not an actual love interest option but does still flirt with you many times. In fact, you're never given the option to even choose a gender for your character, who is referred to with gender-neutral pronouns.
- "Everyone" includes your player character as well, who can fall just as deeply in love with the two men or the two women. It's quite clear that gender is no object for the PC.
- First-Name Basis: The PC learns the Huntress, Wraith, and Spirit's real names towards the ends of their routes (Anna, Philip, and Rin respectively), with the first two actively inviting them to use them to reflect their closeness. The fact that Trapper's real name is Evan comes up a couple of times, but he himself never gives it to the player and he's the only romanceable Killer whose dialogue box never updates to display his name rather than his title, appropriate for his guardedness and disdain for both vulnerability and his background.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: The Killers are acquaintances and rivals for the player's affection who mostly hang out together due to proximity, but they still have moments of getting along well and agreeing with one another… bar the obnoxious and rude Trapper, who doesn't get along with anyone to the point that all of the others refuse to sit next to him at dinner.
- Gag Penis: The Trapper's second-to-last scene involves him presenting himself to the player in next to nothing but a… generously-sized diamond-encrusted codpiece.
- Hidden Depths:
- The Trapper is portrayed here as a boorish, arrogant, bullying, classist Jerkass… who, if the player chooses to romance him, can not only move toward sharing his hobby as an artist with them (if via baby steps), but talk in a surprisingly serious and self-aware manner about how past trauma stemming from family and peers' obsession with strength and weakness was wrong for him to experience and has affected him for the worse - even if he ultimately doesn't think there's any going back and chooses to take away that it's made him tougher and more pragmatic.
- Parodied with the Trickster, During Trapper's route he'll randomly show up to try and convince the Player to romance him instead. If the Player asks why they should, he gives a heartfelt speech about how he's so much more than the Brainless Beauty everyone makes him out to be and that no one understands the real him. If the Player decides to give him a chance after that they are swiftly informed that they've been baited and that there isn't actually a Trickster-route.
- Hotter and Sexier: Dead by Daylight is a horror game where killers brutally murder and sacrifice helpless survivors... and now said killers are far more attractive and actually romanceable.
- I Have This Friend: If the player chooses to have the Wraith speak at campfire storytime on the first night of the game, he'll relate his backstory as a young man working at a junkyard crushing cars, finding out that the cars had contained people who his boss's criminal clients wanted eliminated all along, and snapping and murdering the boss for being in on it and tricking him into taking part, all while framing it as simply a tale with an unnamed protagonist. While hanging out with them after, he'll ask the player what they think about the man in the story and if he "reminds them of anyone" to find out if they hate him for his actions, bumbling through denying that it's him without caving until the next day even if they're reassuring in their answers.
- Interrupted Intimacy: The player's first sexual encounters with the Huntress and the Wraith are interrupted by the respective arrivals of her mother and Dwight and Claudette announcing the arrival of his grandmother.
- Lighter and Softer: While still containing plenty of spooky moments, this is a much more lighthearted and comical game than its inspiration.
- Meet the In-Laws: Each Killer's route involves meeting a (usually ghostly) member of their family and attempting to earn their favor. For the Huntress, it's her mother; for the Wraith, it's his grandmother; for the Spirit, it's her ancestor Kazan Yamaoka a.k.a. the Oni; and for the Trapper, it's his father. The first two are pleasant encounters with relatives who are glad that their little girl/boy is happy by default (even if the circumstances turn out not to be the best in the Wraith's route), while the last two are respectively an overprotective granddad and a cantankerous old man screening you for worthiness of his name rather than worthiness for his son.
- Multiple Endings: Par for the course with dating simulators, the game has various endings for various outcomes of your escapades with the Killers. Whether that be getting together romantically, as friends, or failing at forming any relationship.
- Narrator All Along: A double-whammy: The Narrator and the Ocean, who spend most of the game as seemingly two different omniscient narrators who snark at and argue with each other in addition to everything else, are both the Entity, the Eldritch Abomination Big Bad of Dead by Daylight, all along, though there is at least some foreshadowing to each individual reveal. Trapper's, Wraith's, and Spirit's bad endings all reveal that the Ocean is the Entity, which is the more obvious of the two, but only the bonus scene that you get from completing the good endings for all four killers will show the twist that this is the case for the Narrator as well, which is more subtle than the Ocean.
- Nice Guy: The Wraith is this compared to the other killers, being much more sensitive and shy. Unlike the others, who all have multiple points in their route where they'll kill you if you give a wrong answer, there's only one outcome where you can get him to kill you (the very end of his route if you refuse the request he makes of you), as otherwise he's fairly patient and polite with the player. He's also the only one of the four killers who never murders Dwight or Claudette at any point.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The two male love interest options. Quiet, shy, sweet, socially awkward Wraith is the Sensitive Guy to loud, aggressive, boorish Jerkass Trapper's Manly Man.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: Any action is of the Fade to Black variety, with the Lemony Narrator admitting they can deal with anything except hanky-panky.
- Shrinking Violet: The Wraith takes the role of the "shy sweetheart" Love Interest in this game. He's typically quieter than the others with the narration remarking that it takes a lot of time for him to speak in front of a group, and when he does open up, he's usually awkward and unsure of himself.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: The Spirit as a Love Interest. She's cynical, blunt, easily-exasperated, and prefers relaxation and spending time alone to group shenanigans, but she'll be just as open about her interest in the player as the other Killers if they spend time with her, which will also quickly reveal her to be a thoughtful and emotionally-intelligent person who is aware of how she can come across, cares about their well-being, and is both honest about how the relationship makes her feel and willing to work and fight for it.
- Take That!: One of the reasons The Trickster gives for not being able to participate in the romance is he's creating a crypto-based social media app, which is treated as another sign of him being vapid and clout chasing (an especially fitting take that as well, given DBD's history with NFTs).
- Take That, Audience!: The game is not afraid of making a joke out of the fact that someone would actually thirst after and want to date serial killers. The Lemony Narrator especially will repeatedly call the Player out on being horny for objectively horrible people just because they're mildly attractive.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The bad endings are definitely this. To get each killer's bad ending, you have to play like you're going for their good endings, getting each one to fall in love with you...right up until the very end, where you use your last multiple-choice option after they've professed their love to very cruelly reject them and throw it back into their faces, utterly breaking their hearts. (What's more, this is required for 100% Completion.) It's particularly hammered home with each killer having a final art scene for their bad endings that show them looking crushed and miserable.
