The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Dev Says It Won't Fall Apart Like Friday The 13th

16.08.2023 - 11:13 / thegamer.com / Says It

Gun Interactive is trying its hand at the asymmetrical slasher genre again with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in collaboration with Sumo Digital. But there are concerns about licensing issues after its first attempt, Friday the 13th, fell apart.

“The situation surrounding Friday the 13th was inherently more complicated than it is with Texas,” creative director Ronnie Hobbs said in an interview with PCGamesN. “With Texas, we are dealing directly with Kim Henkel, the sole owner of the IP. We’ve been working closely with him during the entire process not only from a creative standpoint, but also a legal one. We have been as diligent as possible during this entire experience to ensure things go smoothly.”

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For context, the Friday the 13th game is being delisted on December 31 following the 2018 legal battle. Co-creator Victor Miller filed a lawsuit against director Sean S. Cunningham to try and get control over the franchise, and he won the case. After getting the rights back, discussions were held between Gun Interactive and Miller about the future of the game, but licensing discussions didn't pan out.

This didn't dissuade Gun Interactive from pursuing multiplayer horror games, however. Speaking to PCGamesN, Hobbs said, "After the success of Friday the 13th we had a lot of potential suitors contacting us about turning their IP into games. We spent quite a while sorting through and weighing our options before finally being introduced to Kim Henkel. Once we discovered that both sides had an immense interest in creating a game, we quickly knew Texas was going to be our next project."

Henkel is an American screenwriter who co-wrote the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre script, his second-ever film after the '69 flick Eggshells. Since then, he has produced several of the films such as The Next Generation in '95 (which he also directed), the 2003 reboot, and the 2022 legacy sequel. Working closely with Henkel should help to avoid Texas from falling apart under rights issues and any legal crossfire.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is set to launch on August 18, the same date the actual killings happened in the first film, and it's already going down well with critics. Right now, it sits at an average score of 80 on OpenCritic, with a 'Strong' rating. At TheGamer, we rated it four out of five stars, saying that "Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the asymmetric horror game fully realised. It weaves the horror of one of the slasher genre's most guttural and unsettling movies with the thrill of Dead by Daylight's action beautifully".

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