Revealed at last year's The Game Awards, the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre sees the Friday the 13th creators crafting another asymmetrical multiplayer horror game. Interestingly however, it's not the game many thought it would be. Where developer Gun Interactive stuck closely to Dead By Daylight's winning formula, Texas Chainsaw Massacre will see three killers fighting four survivors.
In a suitably romantic blog post released yesterday, Gun Interactive CEO Wes Keltner explained that the move away from 1v4 was done in order to better reflect the source material: "We never want to make the same game twice. You either innovate or imitate, and I don't have to tell you which one makes for a better game. Everyone at Gun prefers to innovate and push the genre forward," he said.
"How do you do this? Well, when it came to the design of Texas we knew that 3v4 was different, "Keltner continues, "All the mechanics and features are built around this fundamental rethinking of asymmetrical multiplayer. Additionally, when you look at the '74 film, you'll note there's an entire family to deal with, not just Leatherface. So, it felt natural to have three killers chasing victims."
This sounds like something of a balancing nightmare, and it's a reality that Keltner and co. are all too familiar with. The team attempts to remedy this by "Creating shadows and items to hide behind, mixtures of open rooms to move slowly through, while hallways become natural choke points that players can move quickly through to find the next hiding spot."
With a new influencer-murdering cinematic twist on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hitting Netflix later this week, it seems as though the franchise is enjoying a second lease on life. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the game) has yet to be given a release date.
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