I don’t know what it is about clowns that make them so scary, but I was also a kid who was deathly afraid of them growing up. So much so that when the time came to check out the 1988 schlockfest Killer Klowns from Outer Space, I was already having second thoughts before it even started. Set in suburbia somewhere in the US, the movie had exactly what the title said come upon a group of hapless teenagers. Much like Nightmare at Elm Street and its ilk, it was downright absurd, but unlike Freddy and Jason’s adventures, it stopped at movie #1 and never got a sequel.
Fast-forward to our holy year of 2024 and here we are, getting multiplayer games based on old slasher movies, and lo and behold, they are generally pretty good. What started out with a niche attempt at dredging up something from the long decrepit Friday the 13th franchise turned out to be a hit, putting developer illFonic’s name on the map, and they’ve wasted no time doing the same for properties like The Predator, Evil Dead, and even Ghostbusters. Then again, said franchises are relatively popular, so when word came that of all things campy Killer Klows would be next, I was skeptical.
Truth be told, after spending several game sessions testing the game out with other reviewers over the course of last week, I can safely say that this is indeed another one of those games. As an adversarial asymmetrical affair, it’s certainly got the chops to attract the same audience that absolutely globbed up the studios’ previous efforts as well as Gun’s go at it with last year’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s a smartly designed objective-based multiplayer game with exciting scenarios and two distinct teams that are generally quite fun to play as.
As you’d expect, you get to play as either a survivor in hope of escaping the “Clown Apocalypse” or as one of the titular villains, the monstrous clowns equipped with hilariously powerful weapons and skills, as well as the uncanny ability to hear the noises that their potential victims make. As part of the bad guys, it’s your job to feed cotton candy to henchmen-producing stations and put a stop to the humans attempting to make it out by either killing them or turning their bodies into that resource.
Basically, a small team of them have to contend with a much bigger group of adversaries which helps make the game less of a slog than Friday, where only one person got to be Jason. As one of three clowns, it turns the proceedings into more of a team-based thing in a similar vein to Chain Saw, where the family members had to work together in order to kill victims and feed a stationary all-powerful character. In Killer Klowns from Outer Space The Game, the end is inevitable, it’s a given, and it’s only a matter of actually making it out as a victim somehow.
At the end moments of every match, if the humans haven’t yet escaped, there’s a final struggle as the movie’s Terenzi brothers break into the map and open up one last exit for anyone still left alive. Given our efforts as a fairly disorganized group during the testing period, some of the games played somehow reached this stage, and to our surprise, folks did manage to get out.
All things considered, though, your experience will definitely vary from mine when the game is finally out in the wild, but these moments alone gave me hope that with like-minded people playing, Killer Klowns from Outer Space can be exhilarating, tense and a whole lot of fun. And that’s the limiting factor that all of these horror movie games have, the need for those playing to commit to their parts, and so far, from observing their progression as they go post-release has mostly been positive.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, for instance, has been getting a steady stream of updates in the form of new characters to play as and maps, and when I pop in every so often to have a go at it, there are numerous active lobbies. The same goes, in varied amounts, for the other handful of games like this. Even Predator, one I didn’t really enjoy, is getting a second life as it’s released on platforms other than PS5 with crossplay included.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space The Game, much like the movie, is an acquired taste, and in very similar fashion, if you’re in the right mind and are among a group that knows what they are in for and are game, there’s a very good time to be had with it. The potential is there, same way as other games in the niche, for this to be a hit, and it’ll all fall to whether or not folks will buy into it. I for one will enjoy seeing how it all plays out as it hits retail.
