‘Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game’ Developers Unleash Zany Horrors
Justin Wood
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During PAX East 2024, I had the opportunity to talk with Jared Gerritzen, the Chief Creative Officer at IllFonic, about the upcoming Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game and take up a controller and play as both Clown and Human.
On the Human side, when you start a match, the goal, much like in the Friday the 13th game, is to escape. The map I played was the carnival, and while things were confusing initially, I quickly learned the mechanics presented to humans. There are multiple ways to escape each map; the significant change here is how easy yet complicated it is to kill the Klowns. As well as finding escape items on the map like fuel cans and spark plugs, you can come across weapons like a knife or shotgun. While the shotgun only temporarily brings down the Klown, a knife, when they are downed, can fully take them out.
As a Klown, it’s your job to capture and kill all the humans—easy enough. But each Klown has its own unique abilities. The biggest thing as a Klown is you’ll be able to use your ray gun to slow players down while damaging them, eventually being able to wrap them up in cotton candy. This will lock the player out of doing anything unless a teammate comes and frees them or if they have a knife to cut themselves out. You can also cotton candy escape routes up to make it harder for the players to escape while you hunt them down.
Read Also: Official New ‘Killer Klowns From Outer Space’ Short Film
Asymmetrical multiplayer games are always a gamble, and while Illfonic was behind Friday the 13th, an incredibly good asymmetrical multiplayer game, Killer Klowns has yet to prove itself. It all felt just fine, and usually, that would be okay, but not when the market is already so saturated with these types of games. Killer Klowns really needs to put itself out there and wow us to stand tall and make itself known. Otherwise, much like Predator: Hunting Ground, Evil Dead: The Game, or Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, they become filled with people who love the franchise but need help filling lobbies and eventually become next to impossible to interact with. I am hoping that Illfonic can swoop in and show us what sets Killer Klowns apart.
Before I went hands-on with Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game, I spoke with Jared Gerritzen, the Chief Creative Officer at IllFonic about what to expect!
Dread Central: What was it like working with Killer Klownz From Outer Space and bringing it back after all these years?
Jared Gerritzen: It’s been a weird one. I saw it in the theater as a nine-year-old. And it destroyed my life. I’ve told this to the Chiodo Brothers multiple times, but I couldn’t leave a burger place without desperately looking around to make sure a clown wasn’t around. It just mentally zapped me in the head. And so when the game was announced, we were all in Germany, and we somehow got stars aligned. We met the Terevision guys. And we hung out for a few nights just going out and drinking and just kind of like talking about games.
We just played it with them nine months, a year ago, or something like that. More stars keep aligning, and we become the publisher and CO dev with them. And so it’s been really wild because they came in as fans of Illfonic projects. So, there was a lot of our DNA in the game. So when we joined on, we were like, “This is how we do these things and start throwing stuff in.” Luckily enough, they had such a really great start to it all. So we just came in and added the horsepower and the history.
I text the Chiodos all the time to get things going with the game and ask questions. So having the true creatives, the guys that were on the set, doing the thing so long ago, and for them to see different scenes that we made, or like our intros are just the cinematics, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, we wanted to do this.” So now they’re seeing the power of games and everything.
DC: Has that reinvigorated them to make the sequel that has been on and off again?
JG: I hope to God that the stars continue to align. We’ve learned from our previous games that games drive the franchise, and the franchise definitely listens. Will a lot of people who are afraid of clowns watch it? Yeah. Because their friends will make them. I’ve been listening to people walking by say, “Oh, my God, Killer Klowns, awesome.” Then people go, “What’s Killer Klowns?” So when we announced that we’re doing it, we’re publishing it, and we got a lot of hits from all the other, you know, great asymmetrical game studios, it’s all about collaboration. I think that all of our previous games have different elements of greatness.
If you’re an asymmetrical horror fan, when you die, you’re just sitting there. We took the respawn system for Predator where in that can you had this weapon system, and you came back and you had guns. But with this, you can play a mini game to fill your pockets up. But you can also send them to other people who are playing. So there’s been numerous times where you have all these people that are spectating, you and they’re playing these minigames to fill your pockets full of goods. With this new system and this style of game, it’s why three versus seven is different. We really balanced the crap out of everything. So it does feel like you have power as a clown. You should be as scary as a clown.
While the June 4th release date approaches, I’ll be keeping a close eye on Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game because it does show potential to be something new and unique. I just hope it doesn’t lose itself to the maw that is asymmetrical horror.
Categorized:Interviews
