'Friday the 13th: The Game' Coming to Switch, What Nintendo Victims Need to Know

Friday the 13th: The Game is coming to the Nintendo Switch this Spring, Variety announced on Monday.

Called Friday the 13th: The Game Ultimate Slasher Switch Edition, the asymmetric multiplayer horror game will arrive on Switch with all previously released content (with one major exception), including DLC like Jason Kill Packs, Counselor clothing and emotes. Nintendo Switch players won't be getting their hands on the Kickstarter exclusive Jason Voorhees designed by special makeup effects legend Tom Savini.

What Nintendo Switch Players Should Know About Friday the 13th: The Game

In Friday the 13th: The Game, players are either camp counselors or the unstoppable killer Jason Voorhees. In each 20-minute game round, counselors work to escape the campgrounds, coordinating to fix a car or boat, call the police, set traps and otherwise do whatever they can to survive the night. But one player will be Jason, hunting them down one by one and growing more powerful as the round goes on.

There are 14 counselor characters in Friday the 13th: The Game, each a different slasher victim archetype, like "The Stoner," "The Girl Next Door," "The Nerd" and "The Jock." Each counselor has different strengths and weaknesses, such as the ability to run for a longer time or repair faster. There's also a 15th player-character pulled straight from the Friday the 13th movie series: Jason hunter Tommy Jarvis, who appears in four movies (one only in flashbacks). Players who are killed by Jason have a chance of returning to the map as Tommy, whose maxed out stats make him a powerful ally to players struggling to survive.

Friday the 13th: The Game also features eight different versions of Jason Voorhees, perfectly recreating how the hockey-masked killer appears in Friday the 13th: Part 2, Friday the 13th Part III, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and also Jason copycat killer Roy Burns from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. In addition, Friday the 13th: The Game features two alternate skins for the character, including a purple and blue Jason Voorhees modeled after his appearance in the NES video game.

In 2016, I wrote about the incredible lengths the Friday the 13th: The Game team went in recreating Jason, including a motion-capture performance from Kane Hodder, who played Jason in four movies.

Jason will kill counselors on the Nintendo Switch across eight different maps, including Camp Crystal Lake from the original movie and locations from four other Friday the 13th movies, plus smaller variants of several maps designed for rounds with fewer players or anyone looking for a more frantic, difficult battle with Jason.

Friday the 13th: The Game doesn't play like many other multiplayer games. Executive producer Randy Greenback describes the gameplay as "hide and seek meets murder" and that's close enough. Counselors will spend the early part of each round searching through cabins with their flashlights, looking for maps, fuses to get the electricity back on, car parts, walkie talkies, pocket knives and weapons that could help them temporarily knock back a pursuing Jason.

Jason plays very differently. Jason has multiple powers, including the ability to teleport around the map to pop up right behind players, enhanced senses and a Rage mode that will let you bash through doors and walls in pursuit of counselors.

Friday the 13th: The Game Ultimate Slasher Switch Edition won't include any changes from the most recent versions of the game released to PC, Xbox and PS4, due to an ongoing legal battle over the Friday the 13th film franchise between original Friday the 13th screenwriter Victor Miller and the series producer Sean Cunningham, who directed the original movie. Most recently, a judge ruled that Miller was the sole owner of the Friday the 13th screenplay, but didn't clarify ownership over series' killer Jason Voorhees (who only appears as a child in the original), essentially splitting rights to the series. No settlement has been reached between the two parties, putting future Friday the 13th projects, including movies and video games, on an indefinite hold.

Due to the lawsuit, Friday the 13th: The Game ceased ongoing development in June 2018. "Development on games can't just pause indefinitely and pick back up again; it doesn't work that way," Creative Director Wes Keltner wrote on the Friday the 13th: The Game forums. "We can't add any content, whatsoever. Nada. Not even a new tree or rock."

Friday the 13th: The Game Ultimate Slasher Switch Edition will be released this Spring, from publisher Gun Media and development partners Black Tower Studios and Nighthawk Interactive.