Developer Gun Interactive shared some new details on its upcoming asymmetrical game The Texas Chain Saw Massacre this week. Gun’s got experience with these sorts of games already following Friday the 13th: The Game, but this time, the new game starring everyone’s favorite chainsaw-wielding killer will have a different setup. It’ll be a 3v4 game, the developers revealed, with three people playing as a team of killers while four people play as a group of survivors looking to escape the antagonists.
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We already knew that there’d be more killers than just Leatherface alone in the game, but little did would-be players know there’d be a team of killers to get away from. A teaser shared on the game’s social media accounts hinted at as much recently via the license plate pictured below, and this week, Gun Interactive CEO and president Wes Keltner confirmed the plan is for a 3v4 experience.
“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,” Keltner said. “Everyone at Gun prefers to innovate and push the genre forward. How do you do this? Well, when it came to the design of Texas we knew that 3vs4 was different. 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 style of gameplay goes against what we typically see in asymmetrical games by putting more than one killer on a team. Games like this are typically played in a 1v4 format or, in Friday the 13th: The Game’s case, 1v8, with powers naturally in favor of the killers since the survivors have the numbers advantage. Keltner added that this setup required “massive amounts of balance” to make three killers unique with a lot of time spent on level design, too, to accommodate the teams.
Balance in any asymmetrical game is always a tricky thing, but Gun said the family of killers feels “powerful, but not overpowering” while the victims feel “somewhat helpless alone, but dangerous if organized.” That’s all that was revealed this week in the post, so expect to see much more shared as we approach the game’s eventual release date which has not yet been announced.
