After a lengthy hiatus, much of which consisted of us wondering whether or not Sony had canned our only hope for a teen slasher game, Until Dawn is back, and it looks fantastic. The game has had a substantial presence at Gamescom, where a gaggle of games journos — not including me, unfortunately — were able to learn more about it during a live presentation helmed by Until Dawn executive producer Pete Samuels and executive creative director Will Byles.

Game Informer was at the event, and it sounds like developer Supermassive Games is doing some really neat things with their horror debut.

For starters, much like in Heavy Rain, if you make enough poor decisions, everyone can die. And when they’re dead, that’s it for them. No pressure.

This comes from the decisions you’ll be forced to make throughout the game — we saw that in the brief video released earlier this week. I’m proud to say that I lost nary a man or woman under my watch in Heavy Rain, and the same goes for the suicide mission in Mass Effect 3. What I’m saying is bring it, Supermassive.

Length is also important, and Game Informer touched on that too in their preview. “At the end of each section, you’ll see your current story path, of which there are hundreds, illuminate on the butterfly. Once you finish the game, you can return to any previous decision point and make a different choice.” So it sounds like the game has an episodic format, similar to Alan Wake. “Each full playthrough will take approximately nine hours, and based on the layout of the butterfly map, there are four key branches early on that lead in different directions.”

From what little we’ve seen of the game so far, it looks like your typical slasher flick, only interactive. This is intentional, and it’s a product of quite a bit of studying on the developer’s part.

“All great terrifying horror is a mix of different types of fear,” Samuels says. “The ratio of the mix varies, but the most effective is terror. What we mean by ‘terror’ is the dread of an overwhelming, but unseen threat, rising and falling in strength, but always there. The second category is horror. Horror is the culmination of terror that happens when you come face to face with the reality and the cause of the terror. The third and least used category is disgust. Disgust is the nauseating, gory reminder of just how fragile human flesh is, how easy it is to tear or cut. It’s a reminder of your vulnerability.”

I’m not sure if it’s new news, but I did just find out that Until Dawn stars Hayden Panettiere (Scream 4). You can find the rest of the preview at Game Informer.