Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Coming from Slayaway Camp Creators; Exclusive: Developer Jason Kapalka Speaks!

Steve Barton |

Oct 30, 2017

There’s no doubt that Gun Media’s Friday the 13th: The Game (review) has won our hearts, but then again so did Blue Wizard Digital’s Slayaway Camp (review). Now a new game from the indie dev is on its way to bring us the best of both worlds!

That’s right, kids, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is on its way from Blue Wizard Digital and we caught up with the studio’s Jason Kapalka to get the scoop! Read on for the skinny and look for Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle early 2018, initially on mobile.

“I was pretty nervous when we pitched the idea of a Friday the 13th puzzle game in the vein of Slayaway Camp to Sean Cunningham,” Blue Wizard’s Jason Kapalka tells us exclusively. “I love the F13 films, but our game concept takes some pretty big liberties. We really couldn’t go the route the Gun Media game did, with absolute photorealistic accuracy to the existing movies. So we were getting pretty wild with new environment concepts. I don’t want to give away too much, but we sent Jason to a ski resort and a beach club for a starter. We definitely pick up some stuff later on with Uber Jason in space, and after that… well, then it gets REALLY different.”

“Though Sean said he’d never seen Jason portrayed like this before, he was really supportive of even our craziest ideas. We’ll start showing some of those off as we get closer to completion…”

Kapalka continues, “It was pretty amazing to get the opportunity to work on anything Friday the 13th related. I was 10 for my first Friday the 13th. I had a reputation for telling ghost stories around the fire at Camp Boysdale, but this year was different: all the kids were talking about the new horror movie being advertised on TV. I foolishly claimed that I had sneaked into a theater to see it, and of course everyone demanded that I “tell the story” that night. I wouldn’t actually see the film for years, but I went ahead with my best improv slasher story. “And after the last horrible death, they closed the camp. But they reopened it years later… after changing the name… to CAMP BOYSDALE!” A flashlight picked out a hatchet embedded in a nearby stump, and two dozen pre-teen campers freaked in unison.”

“When we were working on Plants vs Zombies at PopCap, we did have a similar challenge in making horror-film characters colorful and, well, cute and approachable. But you can only go so far in making Jason Voorhees “cute.” I spoke to Derek Mears, who played Jason in the Friday the 13th remake in 2009, about what you could get away with. He felt that it was essential that Jason always remained a badass and be taken seriously, even if he was surrounded by comical characters or events. So, though we are in a more cartoony mode, we’re careful not to ever make Jason “silly.” And as with Slayaway Camp, there’s no shortage of blood or creatively disgusting murder scenes.”

For more information, check out the official Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle website.