After starting out in denial, I'm finally emerging from the fourth stage of grief over Friday the 13th: The Game's untimely shutdown and entering a phase of acceptance, and it's entirely thanks to Halloween: The Game re-emerging as basically the same game but with Michael Myers from John Carpenter's Halloween. At least, that seems to be the case judging from IllFonic's new gameplay trailer.
I'll admit, I almost – almost – forgot Halloween: The Game existed before this week's gameplay trailer and release date reveal. Can you blame me? Between Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Game, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game, the now-defunct Evil Dead: The Game, and my dearly departed Friday the 13th: The Game, there's a whole lot of "The Games" bouncing around, and they're all seemingly aimed at the cult following trailing Jason Voorhees' spin on the Dead by Daylight formula from 2017.
Halloween: The Game, however, seems like the one to beat now, as it looks borderline indecipherable from Friday the 13th, like a bloated DLC whisking camp counselors off to 1978 Haddonfield, Illinois, and gifting hockey masked killers the Michael Myers mask.
That's appropriate considering Friday the 13th, the film series, was originally and explicitly created to profit off of the success of Halloween, taking the idea of a ruthless, seemingly invincible masked serial killer and simply moving it to the woods, and replacing generational final girls like Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode with a bunch of horny, dispensable, teenaged idiots – played by 30-year-olds, of course. Not to mention, the original Friday the 13th was even filmed in New Jersey! Talk about full circle.
I think I've seen this game before
Watching the PlayStation State of Play the other day and hearing that iconic Halloween piano melody, my ears naturally perked up. But then I saw the gameplay. Michael Myers lumbers around awkwardly stabbing random NPCs to death, those generic '70s era avatars wearing plasticky, feature-less expressions and moving with a familiar stiff, jerky gait.
Michael Myers morphs into a cloud of black smoke and zooms around the map, surprising camp counselors – I mean, Haddonfield residents – with a knife to the chest before indiscriminately turning toward his next victim. Sometimes they fight back, knocking Michael down into an ungraceful lying position, but he gets back up after a few seconds to finish the job. Cops show up, handing Michael's survivors the win.
Wait, this is just Friday the 13th: The Game, but Halloween, I thought. It took me a minute to process this. After all, I was still grieving over Friday the 13th: The Game, often playing the game in offline mode and pretending there's other people there. Like a child emotionally grappling with a new puppy arriving months after the loss of the family dog, I wasn't ready for Halloween: The Game to replace my favorite multiplayer horror game ever. But now, I am.
You can't kill the boogeyman
It helps that Halloween: The Game is being developed by IllFonic, the same folks that made Friday the 13th: The Game. Full disclosure: the studio pumps these things out like a factory, having previously made asymmetrical horror games Predator: Hunting Grounds, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and the aforementioned Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game. But c'mon, this is Michael fuckin' Myers. He's in a league of his own, even above Jason Voorhees, as much as it pains me to say as a Friday the 13th diehard.
My hope is that IllFonic takes the love it so clearly has for '70s and '80s horror and uses it to make its best asymmetrical horror game yet. For many, Friday the 13th: The Game set the benchmark before becoming unwittingly entangled in Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham's legal scrimmage. A bunch of multiplayer horror games based on classic horror IP have tried to fill the void, but none have succeeded.
Michael Myers is one of the most beloved figures in horror, and if IllFonic has any sense about it, it'll do him justice. All it really has to do, in my opinion, is show the same amount of passion it did for Friday the 13th, add some polish, ditch the House of Wax aesthetic so many Camp Crystal Lake counselors went for, and pray to god John Carpenter isn't planning to sue anyone.
Halloween: The Game is out September 8, 2026.
In the meantime, here are the best horror games you can play right now to get you in the Halloween spirit.
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