Popular film franchises being turned into video games is a practice almost as old as gaming itself, but for whatever reason, one movie genre that has never gotten much traction in that department is horror. While a few licensed horror movie games have indeed been released over the years, they’ve always been pretty few and far between. For instance, aside from a recent appearance as a DLC fighter in Mortal Kombat X, Friday the 13th’s iconic slasher Jason Voorhees has only once previously made the jump to the land of video games. This instance occurred way back in 1989, in the form of an infamously difficult NES game in which Jason wore a purple costume for some reason.

With that in mind, Friday the 13th fans were overjoyed late last year, when developer Gun Media announced that it had acquired the rights to create the first official game based on the series for the modern console era. The project was funded via a very successful Kickstarter campaign, which saw enthusiastic fans donate sums well past the initial funding goal.


The stated plan had been to release F13: The Game in October 2016, but since the month is now half over, most fans had assumed that a delay might be coming. Sure enough, IGN is reporting that Gun Media has opted to delay F13’s release to spring 2017. However, certain levels of Kickstarter backers will be lucky enough to get to play the game early, as a closed beta will be launched in late 2016. Each invited beta user will also receive four additional codes that they can share with interested friends.

Jason Friday the 13th Part VI Friday the 13th Game Delayed; Adds Single Player Option
While a months-long delay is obviously not great news for those looking forward to taking F13: The Game for a spin this Halloween season, Gun Media has announced quite the silver lining to go along with the bad news. As requested by many, many people since the project was first revealed, F13: The Game will now include a single-player game mode. As if that wasn’t cool enough, Tommy Jarvis – the hero of Friday the 13th parts IV, V, and VI – will now be included as a playable character. Packanack Lodge – the primary setting of Friday the 13th Part II – will also now be a selectable map.

Initially, F13: The Game was touted as an entirely multi-player experience, offering players the option of either assuming control of Jason himself or one of a group of the franchise’s trademark oblivious teenage counselors. Jason’s goal is of course to kill everyone in sight and the counselors’ goal is to desperately avoid getting killed by him long enough to escape from and/or incapacitate him. While that core gameplay style will remain the same, players will now have the option of undertaking this challenge alone, with the other characters being AI-controlled bots. Hopefully that softens the blow of such a last minute delay.

Friday the 13th: The Game releases in spring 2017 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.