Dead By Daylight is adding its long awaited Alien collaboration, and it turns out it's not just a Xenomorph being added, but also Ellen Ripley, the Nostromo, and also a flame turret to mess with the Xenomorph, too. 

Better yet, if you download the public test beta, you can play as the Xenomorph right chuffing now. Which I'm obviously ecstatic about. The patch notes can be found on the Behaviour interactive forums but ultimately the key thing is that the Xenomorph is a fast moving and stealth attacker that can use tunnels to get around the map quickly. 

Ripley is similarly stealthy and can run silently while healthy, hide in lockers without grunting in pain and even deploy a chemical trap on dropped pallets, which can slow killers when it explodes. Ripley isn't licensed, which as you can see below is a little uncanny valley.  

There's a Mori instant kill – which fans of Dead By Daylight always clamor for – and in this case it sees the Xenomorph pinning their victim to the floor with the bladed tail before biting into their head with the Xenomorph's tiny little mouth-mouth (which is what you call a mouth in a mouth, I guess.) 

Streamers are currently playing it in depth, and YouTube streamer MrGimms managed to find the coolest reference aboard the Nostromo; a sealed room with a Facehugger that slams into the glass when a survivor walks past. Perfect to make the more terrified among us yell in a panic.

The arrival of the Xenomorph on the test server also came with a trailer. It's a good one. 

Dead by Daylight: Alien will be available for purchase on August 29, 2023, on Steam, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Epic Games Store, Windows Store, and Nintendo Switch. If you want something to get you in the mood in the run-up, why not try something from our list of the best horror games?