With IllFonic’s Halloween: The Game finally coming home this week, it once again brings to mind what other horror franchises could or should have gotten their own adaptation. It turns out for Scream fans, that possibility almost came true.
Thanks to the recent data leaks from Valve’s Steam platform, it’s been discovered that Fatshark (the folks behind 2014’s Escape Dead Island and the Warhammer: Vermintide and Warhammer 40K: Darktide games) had been developing a video game adaptation of the Wes Craven series.
Spotted by Kotaku, a user on X by the name roly poly reaper posted about how they had been digging through the leaked data files, and had discovered the previously-unannounced Scream game. Not only that, but they were able to get a build of the game up and running, and had recorded some of the gameplay.
As for the gameplay, players take on the role of survivors trying to escape Ghostface, with one player actually playing as Ghostface. This would actually put it a full five years before Dead by Daylight launched in 2016, by the way.
Per the user, there were several builds of the untitled Scream game (six, actually) in the data leak, with the earliest build the one that they got to run. While it’s not clear yet what the story is behind this game, the user speculates from datamining that the game was only ever made as a pitch to try get the license to the actual franchise. According to the data, the final build was dated February 2011, which was only two months before Scream 4 hit theatres.
Obviously, the pitch was never approved, but had it been, we potentially could’ve had Ghostface terrorizing players before he made his debut in Dead by Daylight in 2019.
Meanwhile, Michael Myers (who was in Dead by Daylight) will be hunting civilians in Halloween: The Game on September 8 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
