Art the Clown Enters the Fog: ‘Dead by Daylight’ Terrifier Test Build Opens Oct. 27
Art the Clown has terrorized Miles County, a Halloween night crowd, a Christmas Eve mall and roughly $90 million worth of moviegoers. Next week he gets his first crack at the Entity's Fog. Behaviour Interactive dropped a new teaser for the Dead by Daylight Terrifier chapter on October 22: a grinning Art aiming a lit blowtorch straight down the camera, captioned "He's burning to meet you." Players can try him themselves when the chapter's public test build opens on Tuesday, October 27 , a few days before Halloween.
It's a big moment for both sides. Dead by Daylight is the most-played horror game ever made, and Art is the rare slasher of the 2020s who earned his icon status in real time rather than inheriting it from the '80s. Below is everything that's confirmed, what's still rumor, how Art stacks up against the game's other licensed killers, and why this crossover could be one of the most important the game has done.
Watch: Art's First In-Game Look
Art made his in-game debut during Behaviour's October of Horror broadcast on October 1. The full broadcast is below, followed by the October new-releases trailer covering the rest of this season's Halloween content.
The Details: What's Confirmed
- Public test build: Opens October 27, 2026. This is the first chance for anyone outside Behaviour to play as Art and see how his power actually works.
- Full release: November 2026, the window Behaviour has used since the chapter was announced. Some fan trackers and data-miners point to November 17, but Behaviour has not officially locked an exact day.
- The power: Still officially under wraps. The new teaser puts a lit blowtorch in Art's hand, and Bloody Disgusting reads that as a flame-based power. Treat that as a strong hint, not a confirmation, until the test build goes live.
- Roster spot: The official Dead by Daylight wiki lists Art as the game's 45th Killer.
- The Mori: Behaviour's Mathieu Cote has teased in an interview that Art's finishing move will set new records. Given the source material, we believe him.
- A survivor? Data-miners reportedly expect Sienna Shaw, the sword-swinging heroine Lauren LaVera plays in Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3 , to arrive as the chapter's survivor. Behaviour has not confirmed it.
- Theatrical tie-in: Dead by Daylight is presenting screenings of the whole trilogy in select U.S. theaters: Terrifier on October 29, Terrifier 2 on October 30 and Terrifier 3 on Halloween night.
- Regal bonus: Regal Crown Club members get a free code for Art's sunglasses cosmetic, which unlocks in the game on November 24.
All of this lands during Haunted by Daylight, the game's annual Halloween event, which is back for its tenth-anniversary year. The same season brings a Hallowed Blight look for Jason Voorhees, a Day of the Dead-inspired November Days outfit for Ghost Face, a Diablo collection that's already live and a returning Stranger Things collection.
How We Got Here
Behaviour first teased the collaboration during the game's tenth-anniversary celebration in mid-June 2026, with David Howard Thornton showing up in full Art makeup and costume for the reveal. At that point there was nothing to see but a logo and a November window. Damien Leone, who created Art and directs the films, called it the most requested collab on social media and said bringing Art into the game was an honor.
Behaviour also ran a cryptic "Don't Blink" teaser series, packed with nods that Terrifier fans clocked immediately: a pair of broken glasses belonging to longtime survivor Dwight, a trash bag full of limbs and a blow-up clown doll. Then on October 1, the October of Horror broadcast finally showed Art moving in-engine. The October 22 blowtorch teaser is the last tease before players get hands-on.
Who's Behind It
Behaviour Interactive
The Canadian studio launched Dead by Daylight on Steam on June 14, 2016. Ahead of its tenth anniversary this summer, Behaviour said the asymmetrical 4-vs-1 game had reached 70 million lifetime players and was averaging around a million players a day. It has also become a franchise beyond the game: Blumhouse and James Wan's Atomic Monster are developing a Dead by Daylight movie, with David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Alexandre Aja hired to write it in February 2026, filmmaker Þórður Pálsson named director in June, and filming expected in 2027.
Damien Leone and David Howard Thornton
Leone built Art from short films into a theatrical phenomenon with almost no studio backing. Thornton has played Art since the 2016 original, and he's become one of the genre's most recognizable physical performers. He reprised the role in Peacock's Bupkis and in the 2024 short A Very Special Terrifier Christmas. Behaviour hasn't said whether Thornton did motion capture or vocal work for the game, though Art doesn't speak in the films anyway; his laugh and his miming do the talking.
By the Numbers: Why Behaviour Wanted Art
The Terrifier box office story is one of the best underdog runs in modern horror:
- Terrifier 2 (2022): made for about $250,000, opened October 6, 2022, and grossed $15.69 million worldwide according to The Numbers. That's more than 60 times its budget.
- Terrifier 3 (2024): opened to $18.93 million domestically, finished with $53.98 million in North America and $90.32 million worldwide per Box Office Mojo, through distributor Cineverse. It's widely cited as the highest-grossing unrated film ever.
- Games: Art has already been a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Warzone operator (Halloween 2024), a Fortnite character, and the star of Terrifier: The ARTcade Game , which released November 21, 2025, on Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
- What's next on screen: Leone confirmed Terrifier 4 in September 2024. It's set around New Year's Eve, is expected to dig into Art's origins and has no release date yet.
Analysis: Art Joins a Very Exclusive Club
Look at the licensed killers Behaviour has brought in over the years and you get a who's-who of horror royalty: Michael Myers in 2016, Freddy Krueger and Leatherface in 2017, Ghost Face in 2019, Pinhead in 2021, Sadako in 2022, Chucky and the Xenomorph in 2023, and Jason Voorhees, who finally arrived this June 16 after years of fans begging for him. Nearly every one of those characters had decades of name recognition before they ever stepped into the Fog.
Art is different. His first feature is only ten years old, and the films that made him famous were a micro-budget sequel and an unrated threequel that outgrossed plenty of studio horror. Putting him on the same roster as Freddy and Michael is Behaviour saying out loud what fans have known since 2022: Art is the first slasher in a generation who belongs on that Mount Rushmore. That's a bigger cultural statement than most game DLC ever makes.
There's a design challenge, too. The Terrifier films are defined by extreme, drawn-out gore, and Dead by Daylight has to deliver that flavor inside a rated game built on short chases and quick hooks. Chucky is the closest comparison: another killer whose appeal is personality and playfulness as much as size or brute force. If Art's power really does revolve around fire, Behaviour will have to make it feel cruel and playful at once, which is exactly Art's appeal. Cote's record-breaking Mori tease suggests the studio is spending its gore budget where it counts, in the finishing animation.
There's also a cautionary note in the roster history. Pinhead was removed from the game on April 4, 2025, because of licensing issues; players who already owned him kept him, but nobody new can buy him. Licensed characters are leased, not owned, and that's worth remembering for anyone weighing a purchase. Nothing about licensing is forever.
Finally, the theatrical stunt is smart. Running the full trilogy in theaters October 29 through 31, right as the test build is live, turns the chapter launch into a Halloween event that reaches people who've never touched the game. Expect a lot of first-time players in November.
What We Still Don't Know
- Art's official power name, how it works and his three teachable perks.
- Whether Sienna Shaw is the survivor, and if Lauren LaVera is involved.
- Whether the chapter adds a new map (a Miles County carnival or a shuttered Terrifier 3 mall would both be perfect).
- The exact November release date and price.
- Which of Art's looks, from the original film through his Santa suit, make it in as cosmetics.
The October 27 test build should answer most of these. We'll be watching.
Bottom Line
Art the Clown is joining the biggest horror game on the planet, and the timing could not be better: a public test build days before Halloween, the whole trilogy back in theaters, and Terrifier 4 on the horizon. If Behaviour nails the balance between gore and gameplay, Art could become the most-played licensed killer since Ghost Face. If the blowtorch hint is right, survivors are going to have a very warm winter.
Your turn: Will you main Art the Clown, or is he the killer you'll be running from? And which Art look do you want as a skin?
Related on The Horror Feed
Header image: original illustration generated for The Horror Feed. Videos: Dead by Daylight / Behaviour Interactive official YouTube channel.
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