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[PAX East 2018] Asymmetric Multiplayer Game ‘Last Year’ Resurfaces
Remember that Friday The 13th: The Game lookalike called Last Year that was a few years back? Well, after some period of quiet, Elastic Games’ debuted the “reboot” of the original project at PAX East with Last Year: The Nightmare.
For those that need a refresher, like Friday The 13th, Last Year is an asymmetric multiplayer game (this time set in 1996) where players take control of one of five high schoolers or a deadly supernatural killer. However, in Last Year, there is more of a focus on a class-based system when it comes to selecting a high school character. Each character will have a certain role in the “team”, leaving the player who gets selected as the killer to come up with a proper strategy to eliminate the more useful members of the team first.
Likewise, the player selected as the killer can also choose from a selection of potential killers to massacre the teens. In addition, unlike F13, you will be able to kill the killer, but the killer in turn can respawn in any location that isn’t in the direct line of sight for one of the survivors, potentially providing for some sweet scares.
Right now, other than the official site and Elastic Games’ Twitter page, there’s not much new footage or screenshots of the game in action, which is kind of disconcerting, given the game is scheduled to be released this summer on Steam. Hopefully after PAX East wraps up, we get some official goodies to sink our teeth into.
The best part about engaging with collaborative genre fiction on the internet is that anyone can get in on the action, with worldwide accessibility often resulting in absurd story beats that wouldn’t be possible if any single person was responsible for the entire narrative. And while Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film is definitely the young filmmaker’s own unique take on the infamous creepypasta, it’s fun to see other creators join the Backrooms sandbox now that the big screen adaptation is getting ready for a record-shattering opening weekend.
As if cleverly timed releases like Puppet Combo’s The Backrooms game weren’t enough (not to mention that Scary Movie poster poking fun at Parsons’ flick), McDonald’s official social media accounts have now released an analog horror video of their own celebrating the liminal terrors of the McRooms – complete with a familiar purple surprise at the end of the footage.
While it’s funny enough to see the world’s most recognizable Fast Food giant engage with internet-borne Found Footage thrills seemingly out of the blue, the video is actually referencing a long-running gag among the Backrooms fandom where creators jokingly talk about there being a fully functional McDonald’s restaurant hidden somewhere in level 0 of the infamous liminal labyrinth.
Now, would it be too much to hope for a moist-carpet-flavored McShake to tie in with the film?
Backrooms is now playing only in theaters from A24.
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