I think I was as surprised as anyone when I saw Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game gets announced at Gamescom last year. Growing up, I had never watched the movie, but I distinctly remember seeing it at Blockbuster and like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Critters or Jack Frost, it lived in infamy as a film that was a scarier premise—or at the very least, a scarier box—than it was a movie.
I would have never in a million years guessed that Killer Klowns From Outer Space would get an asymmetrical multiplayer game in the year 2024, but I guess this is just the crazy world we live in now. However, much like the movie, it’s based on Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game is definitely a better idea for a game than what was delivered—yet another bog standard asymmetric multiplayer game following years behind Friday the 13th: The Game and Dead By Daylight and aspiring to little else.
The plot, such that there is one, is essentially a condensed version of the film. Killer aliens who resemble clowns have come to Earth with the intention of harvesting our delicious, gooey meat. It’s up to a rag-tag group of teens to survive the impending Klown-vasion and possibly put a stop to it. The hows and whys of the “plot” are really up to the player to either know beforehand or ascertain through what little direction is given to the player in relation to the gameplay and speaking of which…
Gameplay is about as standard an affair as these things come. Three players will take on the role of titular Killer Klowns, while seven play as humans. As the Klowns, players will work together to either kill all the humans or turn them into cotton candy cocoons—four of which are needed to power various Lackey Machines to assist the Klowns throughout the game—although random cocoons can be found scattered around the map. If the humans survive until the end of the match, the Klownpocalypse is triggered any any remaining humans will be killed.
The humans will need to work together in order to escape or survive—the only designation humans are seemingly given in this game. This can be achieved in myriad ways—finding spark plugs to repair a boat or power a teleporter, finding gas to fill a generator and using a key card to enter a bunker, or breaking down a barricaded and unlocking a gated tunnel.
“Honestly, it’s all so uninspired that even writing about it is boring…”
All forms of entry have certain drawbacks—the boat/bunker/portal can only hold three people, and the tunnel can collapse if too many people try to use it. Furthermore, in the final minutes of the game, the Terezini brothers will arrive in their iconic Ice Cream truck, providing one last-ditch escape effort to humans.
That’s really all there is to it—humans are underpowered and need to find items and survive/escape and Klowns are incredibly overpowered and need to kill. Luckily for the human team, players are at least given a bit more agency than in games like Friday the 13th: The Game, Dead By Daylight or Puppet Master—did you know there was a Pupper Master asymmetrical multiplayer game?
Humans can equip themselves with either melee or ranged weapons, and if working as a team, they have a pretty good chance of taking down a Klown—they also have a good chance doing it alone thanks to the Klowns’ nose being a major weak spot. One well-placed hit to the nose will stun a Klown, requiring them to mash a button in order to regain their composure and affording humans time to either finish the job or escape.
However, much like Friday the 13th, etcetera, etcetera, the Klowns are still insanely more powerful than the humans, and even being killed—which only takes them out of the game for roughly a minute—isn’t enough to stop their onslaught. Klowns not only possess a cotton candy raygun, but they also possess a melee weapon that takes very little to down a human. Once downed, the Klowns can execute a Klowntality move borrowed from one of the iconic kills in the movie.
I won EVERY game I played as the Klowns, even though you’re given a “poor” to “overwhelming” rating on your invasion depending on how many humans manage to escape, but a poor quality victory is a victory nonetheless, so I wasn’t complaining.
There are some minor trade-offs, though. Firstly there are only three Klowns to seven humans. Klowns are generally slower than humans and lose stamina a bit faster. Furthermore, the cotton candy raygun isn’t particularly reliable, taking a massive amount of accuracy to build up enough sticky string to trap a human, and the thing can overheat. However, these things are minor things to the crazy powers that become available to the Klowns throughout the course of a match.
Honestly, it’s all so uninspired that even writing about it is boring. At no point during a match, either as the humans or the Klowns, was I ever really having any fun because there’s nothing really fun or interesting about it. Perhaps the only thing Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game can claim to have is procedurally generated maps, but it hardly makes a difference since, outside of maybe the Carnival map, there’s nothing visually distinct about any of the other maps—they just feel like a generic town and campground maps.
It could have borrowed more from the movies and given the humans actual objectives to try and stop the Klown invasion, rather than just “escape the map” for the 900th time. It might’ve been difficult, but it could have given the Klowns more interesting gameplay as well—maybe they would need to blend in or appear more clown-like in order to evade human detection.
“But possibly the worst thing Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game does is borrow the worst element of the games that inspired it, namely having to unlock characters…”
And because the game is so drearily uninterested in attempting anything remotely new, you start to notice the little ways that Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game feels so antiquated. You’re effectively thrown into the game with no tutorial or any understanding of what you’re supposed to do. The game loads straight to the menu, and eager players, such as myself will want to get to the matchmaking right away.
While there is a little Tutorial Tab that gives you some text tips on how to play and hints on how to succeed, would it have been so hard to include PLAYABLE tutorials? It would have done a better job integrating players into the world of Killer Klowns From Outer Space, creating some actual atmosphere and not require the player to do a bunch of homework beforehand.
Furthermore, the gameplay isn’t particularly exciting either. Combat is sloppy and uninteresting. Human objectives like filling the generator with gas or clearing cotton candy away from key devices are the same timed button presses we’ve seen in Friday the 13th or even Dead by Daylight, and even the same basic elements of turning on radios to create minor diversions are present.
But possibly the worst thing Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game does is borrow the worst element of the games that inspired it, namely having to unlock characters, weapons and abilities through strict level requirements. This is most egregious for the Klowns, who have several distinct character classes and unique abilities that are small references to the movie. So for the beginning, I hope you enjoy playing Killer KLOWN From Outer Space because the next one doesn’t unlock until level 12.
Thankfully, this isn’t as bad for the humans since, while they do have different classes that grant different buffs, they all play more or less identically, so there’s less that requires unlocking. I cannot for the life of me think why, in a game where the selling feature is the unique monster designs from the movie it’s licencing, you would lock them behind walls of excessive grind.
I don’t understand why you couldn’t have all the classes available at the start and have stronger abilities requiring levelling up. Not only would it have expanded the available strategy for the Klown team, but it would’ve added so much more variety to the game right from the start—actually focusing on the title characters. Of course, special abilities are also level-locked, and some Klowntalities are locked behind challenges, which are also locked behind high-level requirements.
If I can say anything good about Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game, it looks good. It’s certainly not as buggy and janky as Friday the 13th: The Game was at launch. Despite its Unreal engine high graphical fidelity, it maintains the shlocky look of the Klowns to an impressive degree—mimicking the feel of the movie’s low-budget costumes in a believable way.
Furthermore, there is a certain silly vibe that emulates the film’s horror-comedy theme. From the way the Klowns move and sound to the almost slapstick presentation of the execution moves it certainly attempts to pay homage to the film in the same loving way that Friday the 13th: The Game did. Although this praise is more of a vibe than an actual presentation, even this is way sloppier than it ought to be.
However, peppering the game with references to the film doesn’t really create an atmosphere in any meaningful way, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space doesn’t really lean into any of the elements that inspired it. It’s not really trying for horror the same way Friday the 13th: The Game was because its tone and visuals are so disparate, but it never really goes all the way with its camp either because its gameplay and style are so mundane.
Also, it’s a bizarrely tame game. It was something that struck me during the Klowntalities that replaced most of the blood and splatter with cartoony confetti and sparkles. I thought maybe I had some kind of violence filter turned on since the game’s trailers showed the same Klowntalities with the kind of excessive gore that would befit a schlocky B-Movie, but no…this just seems to be the default.
Even the audio doesn’t commit in any particular way. The PS5 home screen actually uses the iconic theme song from the movie, but it’s not really utilized anywhere in game. The start menu for the game has a particularly eerie, horror-inspired sci-fi theme, and even in-game just uses what feels like stock horror ambiance. When engaging in combat, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game uses a kind of grungy, intense theme rather than the incredibly goofy theme the movie used any time the Klowns were on screen.
I really wish Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game could have been ANYTHING other than yet another asymmetrical multiplayer game, because this probably could have been a really good horror game. It was something that struck me about the game’s title screen, which features brief scenes with the Klowns, and the way they’re animated, coupled with the graphic and lighting engines make them look genuinely scary.
But this…this is just boring. Say what you want about the film, it’s at least entertaining in its campiness. Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game is a hollow experience, one that’s been replicated ad nauseam and it’s no longer interesting nor is it fun. It’s genuinely upsetting to me that, at times, the games industry is so bereft of creativity that for all the horror franchises being adapted as video games, this is apparently all they can come up with.
I have no particular love for Killer Klowns From Outer Space, but the fact that Killer Klowns From Outer Space: The Game aspires to no greater achievement than to just be ANOTHER asymmetric multiplayer game, and not even one that tries anything new or pushes the envelope in any considerable way, is truly upsetting. It may not have been a great movie, but it deserved better than this.
