New Friday The 13th: The Game Update Adds Offline Play

A major new update to Friday the 13th: The Game adds offline bots, a max level increase (with new rewards), a new “Virtual Cabin” and Friday the 13th Part 3 character Shelly Finkelstein, plus a bunch of minor changes, including an item fix that might finally let me kill a counselor in a sleeping bag like in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.

Offline Bots

Newly available “Offline Play” allows players to practice killing AI counselors, selecting between one and seven bots and playing on any map. Bots have three different difficulty settings that affect how long counselors will remember Jason’s presence in an area, likelihood of fighting back, reaction times and their proficiency with Medical Sprays. Bots will enact any plans real players would, including hiding, barricading doors and fixing cars and boats.

Virtual Cabin

Also found under “Offline Play” is the new “Virtual Cabin 2.0.” The original Virtual Cabin was a bonus for Kickstarter backers: a curated cabin stuffed with Friday the 13th easter eggs and props, with a basement showroom for unlocked Jason models. The new cabin is still a virtual Friday the 13th museum, but with “something deeper.” Though we haven’t had a chance to check it out, there are hints in the patch notes pointing to a P.T.-like horror/exploration experience, with some jump scares and minor story elements.

Max Level Increase

The new max player level after update is 150, up from 101. This includes new unlocks, including new counselors, more clothing color options and two new grab kills for Jason. But the best addition is new Jason skins, similar to the 8-bit Retro Jason, offering variations on existing Jasons, this time splattered with blood. More levelling bonuses will be announced too.

Shelly Finkelstein

This is the big one. In movie after movie full of good-looking teens getting laid and rocking short-shorts, Shelly is the rare mega-dork (though The Final Chapter has its share of dweebs). Everyone hates poor Shelly, maybe because of his bad habit of jumping out and scaring people with masks. But one of Shelly’s masks, a hockey mask, gets adopted by a real killer. Yep, Camp Crystal Lake victims have Shelly to thank for hooking Jason Voorhees up with his iconic hockey mask. And hey, other than his terrible luck, Shelly’s stats are pretty good:

Best of all, original actor Larry Zerner returned to voice Shelly.

That’s it for major additions to Friday the 13th: The Game, but there a bunch of tiny changes and gameplay fixes too. You can read the complete patch notes here, but there’s a few changes worth highlighting.

The new patch includes minor nerfs to the baseball bat (by reducing the OP Heavy Hitter perk) and medical sprays, which will now spawn less. Fixes were also made to increase opportunities for Jason to score an environmental kill. But the biggest change is additional item spawns at campsites. The remote campsites populating Friday the 13th maps were not all that useful, unless you found your fear meter drained deep in the woods and took a moment to recharge by the campfires. But now, with items spawning in campsites, they’re more likely to get a little more player traffic. Maybe, finally, enough counselors will use campsites that I’ll get the chance to do this:

The new update patch for Friday the 13th: The Game is available now on PS4 and is expected soon on Steam and Xbox One. The patch release parallels an ongoing holiday event. From Dec. 18 to Dec. 23, players will have an increased chance of rolling Rare and Epic perks, so spend your CP in that window if you want to beef up your counselors. The week after, Dec. 23 to 27, players will have a higher chance of finding Pamela and Jarvis tapes. Finally, Dec. 23 through Jan. 2, players will earn double CP.

Happy Killing in 2018!