Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game Review - Clownin' Around

I don't believe in "so bad, it's good." If a movie is especially bad, I'd sooner not waste my time since I don't find especially bad movies interesting on any level. So I've not seen the cult budget horror movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space in probably 25 years, when I was a horror-loving kid who didn't yet know he didn't like "so bad, it's good." That means I initially wasn't excited about a game based on this movie, despite my appreciation for the burgeoning asymmetrical horror multiplayer genre. As it turns out, Killer Klowns is a surprisingly nuanced PvP horror game with enough sugary silliness to not be taken too seriously. Rather than "so bad, it's good," it's simply good.

Killer Klowns follows games like Dead By Daylight, Friday The 13th, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, pitting players versus players in a familiar horror landscape. In the case of this game, players are split into lobbies of three murderous klowns versus seven survivors trying to outlast them and escape the map within a 15-minute time limit. Though each asymmetrical horror game has carved its own path, Killer Klowns actually looks and plays much like Illfonic's Jason Voorhees game, which I find to be only a good thing. It's not a clone, but where it's similar, it's welcome, and where it's different, it usually works out, too.

Survivors will need to scrounge for tools like melee weapons and health kits while, more importantly, locating and activating one of several exits across one of multiple sprawling maps, each of them built with intricate shortcuts to discover and routes to learn so that a skilled survivor can get some distance between themself and the squeaky shoes of a klown on their heels. Meanwhile, the klowns are tasked with patrolling the map and killing all humans, either by directly attacking them or hanging them up as human-sized cotton-candy cocoons until they wither away.