Everything We Know About Friday the 13th: The Game

Halloween might be over, but that won’t stop Jason Voorhees. Gun Media’s Friday the 13th Kickstarter campaign has enjoyed tremendous interest and exposure since it launched, and with 10 days still remaining, the project has successfully managed to raise nearly $600,000+ of its huge $700,000 funding goal. With this in mind, what exactly do we know about Friday the 13th: The Game? Here’s everything Gun Media has revealed so far…The title we’re now calling ‘Friday the 13th: The Game‘ actually started life as ‘Slasher Volume One: Summer Camp’, an asymmetrical 1v7 multiplayer game that paid homage to Friday the 13th. Gun Media actually had a lot of talent from the famous film franchise on board the project long before it was officially gifted the licence, and so the whole thing really made a lot of sense from the start.

The current on-board talent includes Sean S. Cunningham, director of the original Friday the 13th film, as well as make-up/special effects legend Tom Savini (who will be devising a range of creative kills in the game) and fan favorite actor Kane Hodder, who will be bringing his iconic performance as Jason to the project through motion capture. Original franchise composer Harry Manfredini will also be scoring the project. It’s a slasher fan’s wet dream.

So how will Friday the 13th actually play? At its core, the game is founded on multiplayer (though the inclusion of a single player mode is possible through one of the project’s stretch goals). ‘Matches’, if they can be called that, cast 7 players as camp counsellors trying to survive the night as they are stalked by a single player controlling Jason himself.

Voorhees will be incredibly overpowered, which is usually a drawback for asymmetrical games, but it actually makes sense in this context. Killing Jason isn’t the goal; rather, players must simply do all they can to survive his killing spree. That might entail working as a team to put a boat together and escape, or it might involve betraying other players in order to secure a place on said boat, which only has room for two. Indeed, the game really has the potential to become a free-for-all rather than 1v7, depending on how everything plays out.

Camp counsellors are classed by the typical archetypes one would expect to find in the slasher genre, leading to a range of unique skills. The geeky type might be able to fix things faster, for example, where as the athletic jock might be able to run faster and hit harder. While combat is not the aim, it is possible to bring Jason down, though the developer is aiming to balance things in a way that will make this suitably difficult to achieve. Jason, on the other hand, will be able to kill counsellors with a variety of brutal methods inspired by his kills in the movies, and the game will feature all of his classic looks. To top things off, the game is set at Camp Crystal Lake, the franchise’s most iconic environment, which will be rendered through the power of Unreal Engine 4.

The best part? All of this money is going towards improving the base game, rather than creating it from scratch. Upon acquiring the licence, Gun Media knew they would need to step up to reach the potential created by an official Friday the 13th videogame. The game is going to get made whether it meets its goal or not. However, the more money backers donate to the project, the more it will be improved. Therefore, if slasher fans want the game to meet the potential of its licence, they should consider backing the project over on the official Kickstarter page.

He’s behind you.