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If you know me at all, you know my favorite horror icon of all time is Michael Myers, his first appearance – 1978’s Halloween – being my favorite horror movie, too. With hundreds of hours played in IllFonic’s ill-fated Friday the 13th: The Game, which launched in 2017, I have been devoutly awaiting the day this studio tackles Halloween. It is the natural next step, and though I had to wait nearly a decade and play other (great) IllFonic asymmetric multiplayer titles during the wait, the time has come. And with Halloween set to launch this September, it will arrive just in time for me to perfect my abilities as Michael Myers for what will no doubt be a fun Halloween night play session the following month.
Halloween promises to flip IllFonic’s asymmetrical multiplayer formula, pitting one Michael Myers player against four Civilian players. But unlike Friday the 13th, for example, where your primary goal was to escape, Civilians in Halloween are both attempting to bring in local police to stop Michael Myers and save as many residents as they can. It’s not prey vs predator this time, but rather predator vs some Laurie Strode-like characters who refuse to let this boogeyman plague their home.
“Halloween is a special one because it is a true slasher horror game,” IllFonic chief creative officer Jared Gerritzen tells me. “We wanted to go back to the basic rules, jump scares, lots of gore, tension of what is around the corner; a real back-to-the-basics of what is seriously scary.”
The team revealed the Haddonfield Heights map last month, which faithfully recreates the iconic neighborhood from Halloween, and while I’m excited to see what the multiplayer survivor action is like on it, I’m just as excited to become the boogeyman there and use his Shape Jump ability. It lets you show up out of nowhere and terrorize player-controlled civilians with great effect. But it’s not a cheat code to kill.
“[Michael’s] ability to show up in the most insane moments [during films] was not only a great jump scare but a really great way to break up moments,” Gerritzen says. “I noticed he shut the lights off in a scene, and we thought maybe he just wants it dark all the time, and why would that be? Then the idea of how we could play with that as a game mechanic started to form, and Shape Jump, as an ability to move around the map without anyone knowing, was born.
“We made some gameplay rules around it for balance purposes, of course. [As] long as there is no direct light and no one is looking at the area Michael is in, then the ability can be used. It really adds a great level of play, [and] the ability has brought a horrifying element of being stalked by Michael and never knowing where he will pop up.”
To use that ability, though, it’s likely the player controlling Michael will need to power up to an extent by racking up their kill count. Gerritzen says the biggest element IllFonic has been focusing on is adding a major focus on the bots in multiplayer. “They really add to the body count and allow a Michael player to power up if they desire,” he tells me. “This also affects the hero players as well, with their fear systems.”
What’s so exciting about all of this is it’s only one part of Halloween, which also features a single-player campaign where you play through the events of the original film (and a little beyond it) behind that terrifying, sterile white mask. It represents IllFonic’s first crack at a single-player campaign in one of its multiplayer-centric games, and I can’t wait to see how the Shape shapes up in it later this year.
