Dying Light: The Beast Preview – A Franchise Return to Form

One of the most engaging and fresh spins on zombie survival horror games has been the Dying Light franchise, with the best-selling inaugural game commemorating its 10th anniversary this year. After 2022’s standalone sequel Dying Light 2, publisher Techland is returning to original franchise protagonist Kyle Crane for the series’ third installment, Dying Light: The Beast, albeit with plenty of new features in store for players. After playing an early build of the game at Summer Game Fest 2025, Den of Geek was invited for a more extensive hands-on preview in Los Angeles ahead of Dying Light: The Beast’s wide release on August 22.

Set 13 years after the events of the original game, The Beast finds Kyle Crane having been infected with a variant of the virus that has rendered much of the world’s population into ravenous zombies, retaining his autonomy. Experimented on during this period by a villainous warlord known simply as the Baron, a freed Kyle seeks his revenge for the prolonged torture he endured, with his genetic enhancements allowing him to unleash superhuman abilities in a temporary feral state dubbed as Beast Mode. Tracking down the Baron to a former woodland resort region named Castor Woods, Kyle gains new allies for his vendetta while upgrading his Beast Mode powers for an impending showdown with his nemesis.

The preview that we played at SGF 2025 was admittedly short, keeping in line with the majority of other demos at the June event to accommodate the higher number of guests in attendance. The special Dying Light: The Beast preview event in July was a deeper dive into the upcoming title, totaling four hours close to the beginning of the game as Kyle grows accustomed to his Beast Mode powers and the rural environment of Castor Woods. And based on what we played, The Beast retains a lot of the laudable gameplay components from past Dying Light games while adding enough new features and a drastic change-up in environment that reinvigorates the franchise.

For those familiar with the Dying Light franchise, the parkour element remains a core part of the gameplay, with players encouraged to run from hordes of zombies rather than stand the chance of being overwhelmed. The Beast does feature at least one cityscape, with a distinctly European aesthetic, but most of the map is in the untamed wilderness of Castor Woods, with hilly forests, swamplands around a central river surrounded by steep mountains. Compared to the more urban environments in the preceding games, this made the usual escape over rooftops significantly less commonplace and I found myself either heading towards the water to slow my pursuers or sprinting to the nearest scalable building to catch my breath.

The big new shiny mechanic to Dying Light: The Beast is its Beast Mode namesake, with a meter filling as Kyle becomes engaged in prolonged melee combat until finally unleashed when full. These moments are cathartic bursts, usually triggered in seemingly hopeless situations when surrounded or in the midst of a heated boss battle against formidably mutated zombies. These mechanics don’t break the game, including its horror factor – I was still finding myself nervously checking corners and (on more than one occasion) yelping in surprise when I found myself face-to-face with an unexpected zombie – but feel like an organic addition to the franchise.

Less effective is an added driving mechanic to the game, helping players navigate the considerably larger map of Castor Woods quicker, provided they have the fuel and avoid inflicting too much damage on their ride. This mechanic was something that I took advantage of the least, preferring to stay on foot as I traversed the woodlands and resort town. The car handling and navigation is intuitive enough but, at the end of the day, one of the core appeals in Dying Light has always been its parkour mechanics, and that was something I always wanted to lean into.

Keeping in mind that the preview involved an early build, there were some noticeable glitches as the preview event progressed, usually when enemies were killed, awkwardly frozen in gory place – thankfully, these occasions were infrequent but did occur multiple times. Enemy behavior could probably use some slight modifications with this environment, mindlessly running into water where they instantly drown or human enemies completely ignoring the zombies surrounding them to prioritize hunting down the player, even as they take damage. And while the parkour system still largely feels rewarding as it has in prior Dying Light games, the climbing aspect of it is never quite as intuitive as one would like, especially when trying to grab one ledge from another.

Dying Light: The Beast feels like the sequel that fans really wanted from the first game, rather than the abrupt detour that Dying Light 2 provided. The new additions make the experience feel fresh though while retaining the core of what made its preceding games so successful and remaining accessible to newcomers to the franchise. Not a huge reinvention of the series, and all the better for it, Dying Light: The Beast is a welcome return to form for the survival horror franchise, dialing up the action as it maintains the undead tension.

Developed and published by Techland, Dying Light: The Beast will be released August 22 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions are planned for a late 2025 release.