The story was written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who sought to create the video game equivalent of a slasher film.

To ensure the game was scary, the team used a galvanic skin response test to measure playtesters' fear levels when playing it.

Several noted actors, including Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, Meaghan Martin, Brett Dalton, Jordan Fisher, Nichole Sakura, and Peter Stormare, provided motion capture and voice acting.

Critics praised the branching nature of the story, butterfly effect system, world building, characters, and use of quick time events, but criticised the controls.

Supermassive followed the game with a virtual reality spin-off, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (2016), and a prequel, The Inpatient (2018), while a spiritual successor, The Quarry, was released in 2022.

Hannah's twin sister Beth (also Lentini)[20] finds her, but the two are pursued by a flamethrower-wielding stranger (Larry Fessenden),[21] resulting in them falling off a cliff's edge.

A year later, Hannah and Beth's brother Josh (Rami Malek)[20] invites the group from the previous party – Hannah's friend Sam Giddings (Hayden Panettiere),[20] Josh's friend Chris Hartley (Noah Fleiss),[20] Chris' mutual love interest Ashley Brown (Galadriel Stineman),[20] new couple Emily Davis (Nichole Sakura)[20] and Matt Taylor (Jordan Fisher),[20] Emily's ex-boyfriend Mike Munroe (Brett Dalton),[20] and Mike's new girlfriend Jessica Riley (Meaghan Martin)[20] – back to the lodge.

The masked man's torment of the friends culminates with Chris being ordered to shoot Ashley or himself under the threat of them both being killed by giant saw blades.

Matt and Emily, having been alerted to the masked man's presence, discover that the cable car has been locked; instead, the two head to a radio tower to request help.

Finally, Mike sets out for the sanatorium, believing the cable car key to be in Josh's possession; the others scramble after him, with Ashley and Chris possibly falling victim to a wendigo trap en route.

Sam and Mike discover Josh in the mines; his weakened mental state has caused him to hallucinate his sisters and his psychiatrist Dr. Alan Hill (Peter Stormare).

He is slain outright unless Sam discovered enough clues to determine the truth: the lead wendigo is Hannah, who turned after consuming Beth's corpse.

Finally, Mike and Sam return to the lodge to seek refuge in the basement with the rest of the survivors, only to find it overrun by wendigos, including Hannah.

If he survives Hannah's attack, the police discover the trapped and isolated Josh eating the Stranger's head and transforming into a wendigo.

The second, set years later in Los Angeles, sees a medicated Sam trying to get over the events on Blackwood Mountain, with a bleeding scar on her arm, only to be interrupted by a stranger's voice at the door.

[26] Supermassive hired American writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, both of whom had worked on horror movies,[27] to write the game's script.

Byles and the game's production designer Lee Robinson, however, drew storyboards to ensure each camera angle had narrative motivations and prove their placements were not random.

[37] The team avoided substantial rewrites and instead focused on adjusting the game's pacing and direction once the motion capture and shooting process had begun.

[26] According to Byles, a subplot that was removed during development involved one of the female characters being pregnant, which got cut for "prov[ing] too distracting from the main story line".

Byles recognized the design choice as "risky" and that it may disappoint mainstream players but he felt it enhanced the game's "horror" elements.

[60] The "Don't Move" gameplay mechanic, which originally required players to keep their PlayStation controller as still as possible to influence the outcome of specific scenarios, was reworked for non-PlayStation platforms.

In addition, a new mechanic, "Stay Calm", was introduced for third-party peripherals that lack gyroscope functionality, ensuring players can still experience similar gameplay tension without the need for motion controls.

[65] Chris Carter from Destructoid called the butterfly effect system "gimmicky" due to the choices not significantly influencing the plot.

[69] Marchiafava enjoyed the "compelling" story; he applauded the developers for successfully using different horror tropes while introducing several twists to the formula.

[68] Kollar disliked the game's writing and he criticized the "awkward cuts, long moments of unintentionally hilarious silence and hopping between scenes and perspectives with no regard for holding the player's interest".

[e] Push Square's Sammy Barker found the remake's enhancements appealing but criticized the lack of incentives for existing owners and its inconsistent performance compared to the original.

[73][82] Writing for HobbyConsolas and praising the new ending and the extras, Alberto Lloret thought the level of detail in characters and environments was one of the best aspects of the remake.

[77] Oglivie and Shacknews editor Will Borger opined that the new third-person camera made the game less "cinematic" when compared with the original experience.

[80] A Vice article by Dwayne Jenkins also criticized the remake for being unnecessary, poorly performing on PC, and not justifying its high cost without substantial new content, while acknowledging the game's strong narrative and characters.

[74] According to Chart-Track, Until Dawn was the second best-selling retail game in the United Kingdom in its week of release, trailing Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.