New gameplay details for Friday the 13th: The Game were discussed at a PAX South 2016 panel for the Kickstarter project . Footage from a behind the scenes mocap session revealed a number of new kill animations for Jason in the game including:
Jason rips off your leg and walks away with it.
Jason slits your throat and drowns you in a toilet.
Jason folds you in half in a beach chair.
Jason crushes your head in a TBA metal object.
Jason curbstomps your spine.
Jason rips the top of your skull off.
Jason smashes you against a tree in your sleeping bag ala Friday the 13th Part VII
“There’s a lot of brutal kills. If we get away with half of this stuff it’ll be a miracle,” said Ronnie Hobbs, co-creator and designer for Friday the 13th: The Game. Gun Media brought in horror movie effects icon Tom Savini to consult on the kill animations and Hobbs explained that Savini insisted on designing kills that could be created using practical effects i.e. no CGI. This ideology lent itself to some pretty intense mocap sessions, including one where actor Kane Hodder (the man who has played Jason onscreen since 1988) gave himself a nasty injury recreating the sleeping bag smash kill.
The gameplay in Friday the 13th: The Game isn’t your standard multiplayer. Technically it’s a 1 vs 7 game, where a group of counselors have to escape from Jason. However, players are only concerned with their own survival, meaning betrayal is as much a part of strategy as sneaking around. The team realized that most gamers will be kind of a dick in co-op situations.
“You can’t trust people to work together,” said Chuck Brungardt of Illfonic, another studio working alongside Gun Media on Friday the 13th: The Game .
Instead of forcing people to co-operate, Friday the 13th: The Game will force players to be super judgmental. The character classes include the traditional tropes - nerd, jock, bad boy, etc - each with its own unique perks. However, unlike games that silo character abilities and weapons around each class in Friday the 13th: The Game will be about ability. The nerd can fix the truck quickly, for example, but can’t run fast. So the jock might want to help him gather heavy parts and tools and then, when Jason shows up, leave the slow, unlucky nerd behind.
“You give players the control to in some way screw each other over, “ said panelist Kedhrin Gonzalez, the creative director for Illfonic.
Hobbs also confirmed that Friday the 13th: The Game is multiplayer only “at this point” but some stretch goals include single player challenges that, according to Hobbs, will be first-person challenges designed around things like escaping from a cabin as Jason smashes through the back door.
“You finally get to say ‘what would you do’ in a horror movie,” said Hobbs.
What you do in Friday the 13th: The Game will also depend upon the map and where you start each game. Hobbs explained that no official map of Camp Crystal Lake exists but the fans have created an unofficial map that encompasses all the areas visited across the early films in the franchise. It’s several square miles in size, and Hobbs teased that there may be some stretch goals that will allow for the team to develop the areas not seen on the current map:
Players start in different areas each time and the layouts of buildings, as well as the locations of items, will be randomized as much as possible. “Everything has to be random,” said Hobbs, explaining that the experience needs to feel fresh for the concept to work. He believes that Friday the 13th: The Game doesn’t fit traditional labels and told a fan during the closing Q&A that he doesn’t agree with those who peg it as an asymmetrical multiplayer game.
“Asymmetrical is something we had to say because there’s no game like ours,” he said. “It’s the most unique aysmmetrical multiplayer experience we’ve ever seen.”
Friday the 13th: The Game is slated for release on Steam, Xbox One, or PS4 in October 2016 .
