“Everyone knows who Jason is. Everyone can point out The Predator. And, of course, everyone’s familiar with the Ghostbusters!”

So says Jared Gerritzen, Chief Creative Officer at IllFonic, as we sit down for a quick interview with him on Discord. He’s certainly an authoritative voice on this matter too, given that he’s worked on adaptations for each of those cherished properties over the years (in the form of Friday the 13th: The Game, Predator: Hunting Grounds and Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed), giving them all the asymmetrical multiplayer treatment that his development studio has got down to a fine art by now.

He continues: “And that means that people have pre-conceived notions of what those franchises should be. I guess what I’m saying is that they come with the burden of expectation, as you’ve got to [appease] fans of every individual movie or comic-book, regardless of their varying degrees of quality.”

Yet Gerritzen seems less wary of any such purism when it comes to IllFonic’s latest release. Probably because it’s based on an IP that’s nowhere near as venerated in the pop-culture zeitgeist.

From Enduring Blockbusters to a Cult Movie

There’s no two ways about it; Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a textbook example of a cult classic. While it might be yet another hallmark of the 1980s, it’s one that’s far less recognizable to your Average Joe cinemagoer than Ghostbusters and it’s effectively been left untouched by the Hollywood system for almost four decades.

If you’ve not seen it, the film is a B-movie pastiche about a group of ancient astronauts, who inadvertently inspired our planet’s tradition of jesters and fools, running amok in a Gremlins-style rampage. Their goal being to encase hapless earthlings in cotton candy cocoons, so that they can later drink their gelatinized fluids as a means of sustenance. It’s every bit as daft as it sounds.

With that said, apart from the fact that its titular ETs have glowing red weak spots for noses, there’s nothing about Killer Klowns that makes it feel like a particularly obvious candidate for a video game revival in the year 2024. The demented brainchild of the Chiodo Brothers — a trio of special effects renaissance men with shared expertise in claymation, animatronics, creature design, stop motion and more — it’s a modestly budgeted affair that hardly set the box office ablaze, didn’t really penetrate the mainstream consciousness, and never got a sequel (in an era when that was practically an industry mandate). And yet here we are.

For his part, Gerritzen is cognizant of the brand’s relatively niche appeal, conceding: “It’s one of those things where some goofy kids had this absurd idea almost 40 years ago, turned it into a movie and then it just kind of [disappeared] into the ether. But over the decades people keep on rediscovering it and there is a real passionate fanbase out there! You’d be surprised by the number of people who have approached us at expos like PAX, proudly displaying their tattoos of Jumbo or getting starstruck [when they] meet the Chiodos over at our booth.

“And for those who don’t know Killer Klowns, we hope that our game will serve as a gateway into that wonderfully weird world. That they’ll play it and seek out this completely insane film that they’ll fall in love with too.”

On that note, even if it’s not as legendary as Predator or Ghostbusters, IllFonic is still adapting Killer Klowns from Outer Space with the same reverence they held for those other, arguably more prestigious, licenses. Regarding that original film as a kind of holy text, they have been careful to honor its spirit, its tone, its mythos and its iconography in every single aspect of their new title.

So if you are a card-carrying Klownhead, there will be ample opportunity here for you to do the Rick Dalton fingerpoint. Indeed, over the course of just a 30-minute preview session, we struggled to count how many Crescent Cove landmarks we encountered (Hello Big Top Burger!), how many cute Easter Eggs we managed to spot, and how many of our favourite moments we got to experience first-hand. Whether we were avoiding detection from a balloon-animal tracker as a human, or performing a gravity-defying vertical jump as one of the aliens in order to zip around the map; it all felt so authentic.

Rebalancing the Asymmetrical Multiplayer Genre

Speaking of which, this is an IllFonic production (co-developed with Teravision Games) and so it’s naturally an online asymmetrical take on the material. Borrowing quite a bit from Friday the 13th, it’s got the usual match structure that you’ve come to expect from this sort of thing.

Those in the role of would-be victims must scavenge the environment for various items that will unlock escape routes — such as gasoline to fuel a boat, spark plugs to power various electronics, or keycards to enter shelters — while their opponents have the considerably more straightforward task of just murdering everyone in sight.

To be fair, Klown gameplay is a little bit more nuanced than the mindless slaughter F13 veterans might be accustomed to, as you’ll also need to keep your eyes peeled for valuable cotton candy cocoons. These resources can be hooked up to generators — scattered all over the environment — in order to accelerate the apocalyptic countdown that triggers the ends of the match, as well as to spawn in lackeys that will alert you to your quarry’s location. Think of it a bit like how feeding Grandpa works in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Not to mention, you’ll also have a suite of fun gadgets and abilities at your disposal too, like the aforementioned super jump, popcorn bazookas and oversized mallets for caving in skulls.

Somewhat unusually for this genre though, humans can give just as good as they get. From firearms to melee weapons and throwables, they have the capacity for self-defense and can take the fight directly to their interstellar tormentors, provided that they coordinate as team of course.

In fact, some well-placed buckshot or a powerful axe-swing might be enough to take one of the Klowns out of commission, meaning that you can actually rack up some kills as a survivor for once. As someone who has been hoisted upon one-too-many hooks in Dead by Daylight, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pretty damn cathartic.

Recalling how this refreshing twist came about, Gerritzen told us: “It’s a delicate balance. We’ve made four of these asymmetrical horror games now and think we have a pretty strong understanding of what does and doesn’t work.

“The key thing is that humans have to feel vulnerable, otherwise playing as a Klown isn’t satisfying whatsoever. But we also know, from experience, that you can go too far in the other direction. If you make the killers overpowered in these games, then you leave room for annoying scenarios [wherein] somebody spawns, turns the wrong corner and is immediately killed through no fault of their own. That really sucks! It’s one of the reasons we decided to let the humans have a real fighting chance here.”

Evening the playing field further, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game boldly eschews tradition by allowing its survivors to respawn mere moments after death (provided that a resurrection machine has been activated) and they even have a chance of coming back with the gear intact, so long as they manage to ace a quick minigame. As a result, the main concern for human players is not that they could kick the bucket too early, but rather that they might not be able to escape before the timer hits zero. That’s ultimately how you fail here, and it creates an entirely different dynamic. One that encourages you to take more risks, instead of simply cowering in hiding places while your partners do all the heavy lifting.

Should you get away, then you are also incentivized to stick around as a spectator by participating in a short arcadey minigame, through which you can gift your leftover items to any teammates who are still in jeopardy, helping them out in their hour of need. Again, it’s a neat, innovative way of balancing the scales.

Trading Blood & Guts for Confetti & Glitter

Because of that (much-appreciated) second wind mechanic, we actually managed to emerge victorious on our very first round as a survivor. And this was despite the fact that we fell victim to a “Klownality” at the 10-minute mark.

Which brings us to those wacky finisher animations.

Named in a way that blatantly nods towards their Mortal Kombat counterparts, these are uninterruptable kills that Klowns can perform should they manage to down their prey. Unlike fatalities, though, they’re not excessive displays of bloodshed and viscera, so much as they are silly little visual gags that befit the source material. Rather than ripping out spinal columns or bisecting people with saw blades then, you’re far likelier to be pelting them with an entire patisserie’s worth of custard pies.

Describing the rationale behind this, Gerritzen explained: “When we’ve been adapting movies in the past, we’ve often had the privilege of getting to work with the original creators. We were lucky enough to meet Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd when doing Ghostbusters, for instance. Yet that was very much on an ad-hoc basis. They weren’t deeply involved with the project.

“Whereas I now text the Chiodos almost weekly to ask them questions and [solicit] their opinion on what we’re doing. It’s been really, really cool becoming friends with them. They came out to Boston for PAX and they hung out for the entire weekend in the booth, doing lots of interviews. They’re just super cool dudes. They even started gaming now because of their involvement with this!

“They’re also really different from people like Tom Savini [who collaborated with IllFonic on Friday the 13th: The Game]. You know, Savini always tries to figure out how to make the most brutal kills imaginable and he tries to make the audience members look away from the screen if he can.

“The Chiodos have a very different [ethos]. They’re masters of their own, far more tongue-in-cheek, style of practical effects. If you look at their work with Critters, Team America or Marcel the Shell, they’re absolutely not going for hardcore ultraviolence. They’re just not gore guys.”

Which is a characterization of the brothers that definitely chimes with their onscreen output. After all, anyone who has seen the PG-13 rated Killer Klowns will attest that it’s pretty tame viewing (even for the most coulrophobic of individuals), sharing more in common with something like Mars Attacks! than it does intense horrors like Stephen King’s It or the Terrifier films. Indeed, it never gets much worse than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it decapitation and its most gruesome moments are generally softened with a tinge of black comedy too (like when the aliens drink blood through an extravagant silly straw!) So, it makes sense that the Chiodos would want the game adaptation to strike a similarly playful tone.

“That was actually the subject of one of my first calls with them,” Gerritzen adds. “We presented them with the original Klownalities and their response was: ‘This is very cool, but it’s all blood.’ They wanted us to rein that in and injected this idea of replacing most of the gory [giblets] with confetti, glitter and bubbles. Because that’s what’s Killer Klowns is! It really changed our way of thinking.

“We realized that we were still in that Friday the 13th and Predator mindset — where gore is a big deal — and that had to shake out of it. I’m so happy that we did that because what we ended up with is far truer to [the spirit of that] original film.”

Based on the short snippet of Killer Klowns from Outer Space that we’ve played thus far, that’s very much our impression too. It’s a game that absolutely understands its heritage, captures its creator’s unique sense of humour, and seems to be quite well-polished to boot. Whether or not it will be the Greatest Show on Earth, it’s still a circus that we can’t wait to experience in full.

Co-developed by Teravision Games and IllFonic, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on Thursday the 6th June.