Evil Dead: The Game (PC)

Evil Dead: The Game is a 4-vs-1 asymmetric multiplayer horror from Saber Interactive, pitting a squad of four human survivors against a single player commanding the Kandarian Demon and its Deadite armies. Unlike Dead by Daylight or Friday the 13th, where survivors mostly hide and pray, this one hands you a boomstick and expects you to use it. Axes, hammers, pistols, shotguns, rifles, chainsaws, and nailed bats are scattered across sprawling maps, and the combat explicitly rewards aggression. That single design choice sets Evil Dead apart from almost everything else in the subgenre. Survivors choose from four classes - Leader, Warrior, Hunter, and Support - each with distinct skill trees and hero-specific abilities built around iconic franchise characters. Multiple versions of Ash Williams cover the roster, with Bruce Campbell reprising the role and recording fresh lines. The core match loop runs in three stages: hunt down map pieces, secure the Kandarian Dagger and the Lost Pages of the Necronomicon, then hold a King-of-the-Hill finale against the Dark Ones. A fear mechanic keeps the pressure on the whole time - stray from your teammates or stay in the dark too long and your fear meter climbs, making you visible to the demon and vulnerable to possession. Getting your own best player turned against the team is exactly as funny and catastrophic as it sounds. Playing as the Kandarian Demon is a genuinely different kind of game. You float around the map in first-person, invisible to survivors, scooping up Infernal Energy orbs to spend on setting traps, opening portals to spawn Deadites, possessing cars and trees, and eventually unleashing a powerful army boss when the cooldown finally clears. Three demon factions offer distinct flavors: the telekinesis-heavy Puppeteer, the brute-force Warlord led by Henrietta Knowby, and Evil Ash's Necromancer army built around summoning and resurrection. The problem is that the early-game demon loop leans heavily on orb collection, and flying around a dark map vacuuming up glowing dots gets tedious before the real power spikes kick in. Balance has been a recurring criticism - the demon can feel underpowered in the mid-game, and ability cooldowns are punishing if you misjudge your energy budget. The single-player mission mode is an afterthought dressed up as a bonus. It covers key moments from the films and the Ash vs Evil Dead series, but the missions have no checkpoints, scale as if designed for a full squad, and mostly exist to gate unlock certain playable characters behind frustrating solo gauntlets. Skip them until you have the patience, or treat them as survival practice. The more honest warning is about player population: Steam reviews sit in mixed territory, matchmaking queues can run long outside peak hours, and the community skews experienced. Dropping in solo against a coordinated demon player while still learning the fear mechanic is a rough introduction. Bring friends or at minimum a Discord group, because the survivor experience without communication is a noticeably different game. For what it is - a licensed asymmetric horror game overflowing with franchise love, sharp class design, and a combat loop that actually empowers survivors - Evil Dead: The Game does its one best thing very well. The fan service is dense and sincere: the Knowby Cabin, Sam Raimi's swooping first-person camera effect, faithful Deadite models, locations from across all three films and the TV show. If you are an Evil Dead fan with a few friends to drag along, the moment a possessed teammate unloads a shotgun into your face while Ash shouts a one-liner is hard to beat. Just go in knowing that the solo experience and the demon side are rougher propositions than the survivor co-op highlight reel suggests.

Alex · Scout Team

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