Friday the 13th: the slasher genre, in a game

One of horror’s most requested game adaptations was on its way: Friday the 13th, the game where you could finally play as Jason Voorhees — or as one of the teenagers trying to escape the man in the hockey mask.

Let’s be honest about the franchise’s track record: Friday the 13th had never had a good game. Two titles existed — one for Commodore computers in 1985, one for NES in 1989 — and Gun Media set out to end that losing streak with the game the films deserved. Third time’s the charm, right? This would be a third-person survival horror where players took the role of a camp counselor, or controlled the merciless Jason Voorhees himself for the first time.

The setup was asymmetric multiplayer perfected: seven players scrambling to survive the summer camp at Crystal Lake while the eighth — the man with the hockey mask — tracked them down and picked them off. Survival was on you, whether you chose to hide alone and quiet or work as a team to escape. Fighting back was possible, but inadvisable — the movies tell you what to expect.

Playing as Jason brought its own powers: stalking prey, setting ambushes, and performing a full roster of executions, with unlockable incarnations of Jason from across the films plus two never-before-seen designs.

The project raised its budget on Kickstarter, asking $700,000 with the usual backer rewards — copies, art, soundtracks, signed memorabilia. Gun Media planned the game for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

It shipped in 2017, found its audience instantly, and — after a licensing dispute froze its servers — remains a beloved, haunted experiment. Copies of Friday the 13th: The Game are collector’s items now; the trailer below shows why.