A new game based on the classic Friday the 13th slasher film franchise is under development for release in October 2015, according to EGM. Similar in concept to Turtle Rock Studios’ upcoming Evolve, the game centers around a mix of cooperative and competitive play in which a group of survivors takes on the machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing psychopath, Jason Voorhees.
Tentatively called Friday the 13th, the game is currently in development by an unannounced, “experienced game studio” for multiple, unnamed platforms, aiming for an October release. This is the first video game adaptation of the popular horror franchise since the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System game, which has frequently appeared over the years on lists alongside E.T. for the Atari as one of the most notoriously bad games of all time.
“With a new television series on the horizon and plans announced for the thirteenth installment of the film franchise, we felt the timing was right to finally explore Jason, Camp Crystal Lake, and the rest of the Friday the 13th story in interactive form,” explained Sean S. Cunningham, who directed the original, 1980 film. “We have some exciting new ideas for a game that supplies plenty of replay value, while delivering the kinds of thrills and scares that fans of the franchise have come to expect.”
The game promises to dig into the lore of the original films while also tying in to the upcoming television series, for which Cunningham has returned to the franchise as a producer. Survival horror games took center stage in 2014 with releases like Shinji Mikami’s The Evil Within and Alien: Isolation, and the extensive buzz around the mysterious P.T. interactive trailer for an upcoming Silent Hill project. Combining that renewed interest in the genre with the widely-hyped gameplay of Evolve seems like a natural progression, and Friday the 13th is a known franchise to ground the concept.
