The Haunted Hoard: Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle (PC)
With their horror puzzler Slayaway Camp, indie developer Blue Wizard Digital made no secret of their love for 80s slasher movies. Not only was the game replete with references and homages to a range of franchises, its main character Skullface took direct influence from Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees. Thanks to the success of Slayaway Camp, Blue Wizard Digital ended up on the radar of the rights holders for Friday the 13th, and soon the team was able to go from making an homage to actually producing their own Friday the 13th game, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzler having Jason himself being the one sliding around small maze stages to slay victims in a cartoonishly bloody fashion.
A typical puzzle in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle has a simple goal: kill everyone. Cops are exempt from this mandate admittedly as they’ll grab Jason or, if they’re in SWAT gear, shoot him up should they notice him, but for the most part, the challenge is getting Jason to every idling victim to carve them up with whatever weapon you have in hand. Characters usually will stand in place and only move if Jason either stops right next to them or kills someone beside them, but getting them to run away in fright can either be a hindrance if they are able to flee to an escape route or a vital step in lining up your next kill. The characters in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle can only move in four directions on a square grid, and for Jason, once you press a direction, he will slide out as far as he can in that direction until he hits a wall, hazard, or person. If you touch a victim, Jason kills them, and once every eligible victim has been taken care of, a final character will appear at a spot marked with an X you need to make your way to.
The challenge in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle ends up being working out how to move Jason properly to account for his sliding style of travel, sometimes needing to come up with long-term plans for how you will have him manipulate the small mazes to better suit your needs. While at first this starts as just scaring people into better positions, you will start to uncover new hazards and concerns as you get deeper into the game. Things like fire or pits will instantly kill anyone who enters them, Jason also needing to avoid them but able to use them if he can’t reach a character. Jason can ring up telephones to lure people in, but he also needs to make sure he doesn’t kill any cats or he automatically fails a level. Some levels will even restrict how many actions you can take, the player automatically failing if they can’t figure out the right movements in these stages. You can always retry stages without penalty and undo any actions you have taken, but for fans of Slayaway Camp, some of these details are likely sounding incredibly familiar. Rather than Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle really taking advantage of the new branding, it seems to be carrying over almost every mechanic from the original with no new meaningful alterations.
This rehashing even impacts the story some. The undead killer Jason Voorhees is on the prowl in his familiar haunt of Crystal Lake to start with and he will eventually head to some places from other movies like a trip to space to line up with Jason X and one segment makes some fun jabs at Friday the 13th: Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan by having pre-level comments complain about the abundance of ship levels in what is meant to be the city chapter. However, some of the other chapters just bring over settings from Slayaway Camp. It’s not without some new if unusual picks for locations, so amusing as it can be to see Jason in prison for his crimes, reusing areas like the beach and so many mechanics from its predecessor means Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle loses some of its unique identity. Most of the puzzles do seem original creations, the game originally released in level packages on Steam that were free for the most part but the ones that cost money do at least explore brand new areas like medieval times or even the prehistoric past. Again, it does feel like Jason and the Friday the 13th series aren’t really represented well through these inclusions though no matter how much the decapitated and still bleeding head of Jason’s mom tries to justify it as she guides her son on his murderous rampage.
Being mostly a set of new levels for Slayaway Camp isn’t a bad thing though, and there are a good range of levels from the quick and simple to the deviously complex to ensure that you are given a range of enjoyable and challenging puzzles to overcome. Most new episodes do a good job of building up their new mechanic before they start mixing them in with older ideas to make the more complicated levels, and while someone who was unfamiliar with Slayaway Camp’s silliness might wonder why Jason is going to such an odd range of locations, they’d definitely find little issue with the level design. There are a few other areas where the game can reference Friday the 13th a little more, the player able to unlock a range of costumes for Jason that include his different looks from the movie franchise plus new ones to match the new locations he finds himself in.
A bit odder though is the weapon system, the player frequently earning randomized weapon drops after clearing enough levels. Weapons don’t impact how a puzzle can be solved, but when it is killing time, the way Jason ends someone’s life will be influenced by his weapon. The cute simplified people of Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle will almost always be killed in some over the top fashion, an animation sometimes playing when Jason strikes that usually keeps the famous killer’s usual imposing presence in tact even if the victims are a little goofy in how they react to him. Some seem a bit confused about what’s about to happen, others ineffectually fight back, and sometimes Jason just carves them up with ease, but the amount of them does feel a touch limited when you realize there are tens of weapons to acquire. What’s even stranger is the game doesn’t seem to really account for his weapon at times with the killing animation. Giving Jason a toilet seat or skateboard to kill someone with is definitely meant to be silly, and the first time you see him carve someone in half with a blunt object like a kayak paddle can be a touch amusing, but seeing him try to smash people to death with a blade weapon or run someone through with a dumbbell just starts to feel like the weapons hardly matter. The kris dagger for example is a very short knife, but you can still see Jason stab someone with it in a manner meant for longer weapons, the blade barely piercing the victim’s chest. There’s a system to trade in repeats for new weapons and despite the game being delisted it will still trigger ads between some levels trying to convince you to buy boxes of random weapons with real money, but it’s a sadly shallow system that makes the otherwise simple but fun animations lose a touch of their charm.
There is one type of kill with a bit more punch though, the final victim of a level triggering a quick minigame with a moving meter. Timing a button press right will determine if you successfully kill your target and the blood you get for unlocking weapons is higher if you do, and some end of level kills are a bit better looking than the standard ones. A Murder Marathon even lets you string together these quick killing minigames to see how far you can go, a rock song with lyrics called “Run For Your Life!” playing during it that energizes the action a little bit if you just want swift visceral thrills. Daily challenges add some unique puzzle levels with a virtual reality aesthetic too, but there are over 100 standard levels to tackle so it doesn’t feel like these simple extra modes leave it a slight package.
THE VERDICT: Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle may sometimes feel like a reskinned Slayaway Camp, but more of a good puzzle game is rarely a bad thing. The sliding slaying progresses through a range of new mechanics that add appreciated variety to the single screen challenges, the complexity never reaching absurd levels but still becoming demanding enough you’ll need to wrack your brain to solve them. At the same time, the cute characters killed in ridiculously bloody ways are a nice way to decompress as you solve the puzzles, but it is a shame the weak weapon system doesn’t add a lot to it. It may not really feel like it’s capturing the Friday the 13th series particularly well outside of surface level ideas, but it still provides an enjoyable bloody puzzler to while away some time with.
And so, I give Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle for PC…
A GOOD rating. When it comes between picking whether to get Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut or Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, it’s not even a contest. Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut has more content and variety, and thanks to rights issues, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle had to be delisted so it isn’t even available. It actually had a fighting chance before thanks to some episodes being free, but at the same time, it feels like there isn’t much to really say one does better than the other save in terms of content breadth. Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle may have copied a lot from its forebear, but that means it has levels that provide interesting movement challenges, an art style that makes for kills that are silly fun instead of gruesome displays, and the introduced mechanics and gimmicks of later levels help to build up to some levels that are satisfying to figure out. If the weapons were to be emphasized so much, they should be appropriately catered to with specific animations and more unique ones for the supposedly special tools, but really, it just feels like the game was too afraid to fully embrace the brand. Content recycling from Slayaway Camp doesn’t feel like a necessity with a series as long-running as Friday the 13th, and even if they were nervous about scouring the films for eligible locations or mechanics, embracing the absurd instead of trying to crowbar Jason into places and situations Skullface skulked about in previously would at least help the game form a more unique identity.
Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is just as good as the game as it uses for its baseline and it is still nifty to see an indie team get a chance to produce a game using the franchise that so clearly inspired their work. Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is unfortunately no longer available for purchase though, but for a time it at least proved to be an enjoyable Friday the 13th game despite many of its ideas not coming from its source material. Almost feeling a bit more like Jason and his mother’s head guest starring in Slayaway Camp, it at least gets to ride the quality sliding and slaying puzzle designs and concepts towards being the best Friday the 13th video game released to date.