If you’re reading this, I have to assume you’re a horror fan. Whether you’re just into horror, horror movies, or horror games, you probably know what sparked your fascination with the genre.
For me it was Friday the 13th: The Game. Before that, the thought of horror scared me. The idea of sitting down to watch a scary movie was not a pleasant prospect, it felt more like a punishment. Well, that’s what I thought at first anyway. Ultimately, my love for video games overcame my discomfort with the idea of gory media.
Friday the 13th: The Game started out as a Kickstarter that raised nearly a million dollars. There were a lot of reasons why this project caught the attention of the horror community, including the involvement of some true horror legends. There was Sean S. Cunningham, who directed Friday the 13th, and makeup and prosthetics wizard Tom Savini, and Kane Hodder, who is famous for playing the legendary killer Jason Voorhees. The idea was to make a game that did justice to the films, where a guy in a hockey mask kills people in Camp Crystal Lake. And sometimes in New York. And space. It gets complicated.
As a horror novice, this didn’t mean much to me at the time. But the finished game ran very quickly when I played it. As I entered the lobby, I was struck by the atmospheric music that created a sense of dread. From the start, the game beautifully prepares you for a night of riotous carnage.
In gameplay, Friday the 13th is an asymmetric horror like Dead by Daylight. You can play as Jason or one of the camp counselors trying to escape him and the map itself before the unthinkable happens.
I don’t really need to tell you how to play as Jason, right? You hunt everyone down and kill them. However, as a consultant there are different routes to success. You can find a fuse and get the camp’s electricity working, which means you can call the police. You have to avoid Jason long enough to then run to one of the two exits on the map where the police are waiting for you. More difficult than it sounds.
Moreover, you can use vehicles to escape, namely a car and a boat. Jason hate especially if you use the car. Maybe it’s because you fixed it right under his nose, or maybe it’s because you can take other advisors with you and escape together. Whatever the reason, this big guy will teleport in front of you while you’re running to force you to crash. That’s right. This guy isn’t afraid of the car, the car is afraid of it.
You can also just wait for the clock, and that would count as a win for the advisors. In addition, there is another way to win the game, which I will tell you more about later. It’s complicated, but boy is it satisfying?
Being new to the series, I fell in love with this game almost immediately. I loved the semi-real world, which for me added far more tension to the experience than fantasy would have. This wasn’t like Dead by Daylight, where you’re taken by an alien entity and thrown into horrific hellscapes to be sacrificed over and over again. Instead, there was something familiar and recognizable about it, and that familiarity let players know that Jason wasn’t just a lord of nightmares, but could take you wherever you felt safest.
This sense of familiarity also worked beautifully with the music, which was often low in the soundtrack as you ran around collecting supplies, but would spike and scramble, like an old television set searching for a signal when Jason appeared, and would get louder as he got closer.
Then there’s just the attention to detail. This includes the fact that certain advisors are better at certain things. Some have extra stamina, some are less easily frightened and are better at skill checks and sneaking around the map. I personally preferred the sneakier, more cunning characters. I’d play goth girl AJ Mason as the lead, whose stats leaned toward that playstyle. (She was also played by Marisha Ray from Critical Role, and it took me way too long to figure that out.)
Different skills and stats also play into the tactical thinking and risk-taking that the game has always demanded. Sometimes you had to choose between damaging your health by crawling out of broken windows or looking Jason straight in the eye. Or maybe setting traps for him. Or maybe…?
The result of all this was a multiplayer game that created real stories. In other words, allow me to get overly dramatic for a moment.
Imagine this: I was the last counselor left on the card, the situation looked bad, but I was the factually Final Girl be damned, and I would make it out alive. I had holed myself up in a cabin, barricaded the only door to the place, and strategically placed a bear trap on my side of the door.
I had opened the windows to keep Jason from smashing them and costing me my health if I had to jump out and escape. I was crouched in stealth mode. I had a baseball bat in my hand.
I was done.
Finally, Jason approached the cabin. I ran between the rooms so he couldn’t hit me with his throwing knives. He decided enough was enough so he broke down the door and stepped into my bear trap. I think he knew it was there, but he also knew it wouldn’t slow him down too much.
I hit him with the bat and he fell. I didn’t see that coming! Then I made a break and saved my stamina by jumping through an open window into the nearest locked hut.
Of course we’re talking about Jason Voorhees, I couldn’t avoid him forever. He caught me between the trees and he must have thought the game was over.
He didn’t know I had three pocket knives ready.
He got angry, he cried, he called me and asked me to stop ‘manipulating’ him (true story).
I was ready to do that dance until dawn.
But then he disconnected, what far less poignant.
As you might expect, the game had its flaws, and it had servers that felt like the Wild West, and it had wild glitches. But the glitches, like so many other things in this game, could be beautiful. You could land on rooftops, glitch in places that Jason just couldn’t get to, and sometimes you’d fly up and off the map to meet Jason X in space. Sometimes the map would spawn with a bunch of trees in the buildings. It was surreal and kind of beautiful.
And it was funny too. The glitches can be annoying for Jason players and companions alike, but for me it was hard to be too scared of Jason riding on the hood of your car and not being able to get out. These are the kind of memories that only video games can create. Movies and novels can’t get you there.
As silly and broken as it could be at times, Friday the 13th stayed true to its source material, and this is never more evident than in that final complex method of victory I teased earlier. If you work very well as a team, you can do better than escape Jason: you can finish him.
It’s tricky. To do this, you have to remove his mask, have a female counselor act as Jason’s mother, and then lure him into a vulnerable state. If Tommy hits him, it’s all over. You win. Horror stories are weird.
Things like that remind you how much love went into the creation of this game and how much room there was to grow. But fate had other plans. Just as Jason likes to ruin a summer vacation, a rights argument and lawsuits lead to DLC being canceled and development halted. Friday the 13th is just playable today, but it’s choppy and broken and I wouldn’t recommend it.
But listen, isn’t that a classic Jason? Just when you think he’s dead, he comes back to life. And maybe this series that opened up the world of horror to me will get another chance to make it as a game. If so, I’ll be there waiting. And I’ll make sure I have pocket knives on hand, because you never know.