Slaughter brilliant: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre game is another killer horror film adaptation

In 1975, Tobe Hooper’s genre-defining masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was refused a release certificate by the BBFC. James Ferman, the then secretary of the organisation, labelled the film as “the pornography of terror” and believed no amount of cutting could alter the tone of intense horror present in the film. The early 80s saw the film swept up in the video nasty moral panic, with VHS copies pulled from the shelves and the film refused a home release until 1998.

Now, almost 50 years after the original film release, British developer Sumo Nottingham and American publisher Gun Media have teamed up to unleash an online video game adaptation that allows the player to either scramble to survive or take control of the cannibalistic Slaughter family and hunt down their next meal.  

Remarkably, this isn’t the first time that the film has been officially adapted into a video game – this latest release follows in the footsteps of an incredibly rare Atari 2600 game from 1983. That game tasked a blocky Leatherface with hunting an endless wave of fleeing victims for as long as his chainsaw chugged along. Forty years later and video game technology has advanced to the point where the film’s crazed family and sweltering nightmare farmhouse can now be recreated with astonishing accuracy.

The rural Texas homestead in the film as designed by Robert A. Burns is a sacred location for horror fans. Human and animal remains are arranged into macabre works of art throughout the dysfunctional family home: severed arms stand in for wooden chair arms, a human head glows as a lamp, a bench features a bizarrely splayed human skeleton, and chicken feathers and bones litter the filthy wooden floor.

The film’s shoot was notoriously gruelling, due to the blistering Texas summer heat and the stench of the rotting design artefacts, and the game perfectly recreates the putrid location down to the smallest detail. The relentless sun sets low over the farmhouse as the player sneaks around the morbid furniture looking for an escape route, avoiding the dangling bones that will alert the family and send Leatherface charging into the room, growling chainsaw held aloft.

Fans of the film will appreciate just how accurate the game world is, a fundamental part of the player experience that the team worked exceptionally hard on – from studying every frame of the film to researching accurate weather patterns and fauna for the exact time period and geographical location in which the film is set. As a community blog on the game’s official website notes: “the 1974 film could only take place in Texas, those orange sunsets and sunrises and the waves of heat echoing up off the road, those are the elements you can feel while watching.”

Strict authenticity also extends to the film’s impactful sound design, with game music that echoes the discordant soundscape of the source material and a simulated chainsaw roar that instils genuine fear in the player.

Film to game adaptations allow fans to dive into a world in which they’ve only seen play out on screen as spectators, but it’s the opportunity to explore what lies beyond the film’s boundaries that is arguably more tantalising. Filming took place in a farmhouse in rural Texas, but eagle-eyed viewers may notice that we only ever see half of the interior location on screen; the filmmakers rented the house from a family who lived in the other half during production.

This meant that the development team were given free rein to imagine what lurks in the unseen corners of the film’s locations, including Leatherface’s basement lair, where unfortunate victims could find themselves dangling from meathooks and the ramshackle buildings to the rear of the dilapidated gas station. As lead designer Steve Kirby explains: “What would be behind this door? What spaces have this family of killers created? How do the family live in these spaces? How have they constructed these areas?” This creative license also extends to new members of the diabolical clan with the introduction of sadistic ex-Manson girl Sissy and the dangerously handsome Johnny – two completely original killers created in collaboration with Kim Henkel, co-writer of the original film. 

Recent years have seen a boom in asymmetrical online horror games based on well-known horror franchises – Friday the 13th famously put players in the shoes of the vengeful Jason Voorhees and the ill-fated counsellors at Camp Crystal Lake; Dead by Daylight features numerous iconic horror villains such as Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Pinhead; and there’s even an upcoming title based on the campy video shop favourite, Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988).

But why now? Although there have been games based on classic horror franchises in the past, technological limitations have meant that recreating the feeling of a slasher-style horror film has been almost impossible. The excitement of the genre comes from watching a powerful killer (or killers) hunting down their prey – the thrill of this morbid chase extremely difficult to recreate with prior technology. These films, and the online games based on them, are built around this hunter vs prey imbalance of power, and online gaming is the perfect vehicle to allow multiple players to either indulge in their worst instincts or explore what they would do when forced into a horror film scenario. Would you run up the stairs or throw yourself through the window if Leatherface is mere steps behind you? Would you hide in the freezer or rush to help if your friend is cornered in the kitchen by the razor-wielding Hitchhiker? The structure and nature of online asymmetrical gaming has finally offered the player the opportunity to explore these theoretical questions in an authentically rendered environment. Games are often built on power fantasies, and asymmetrical horror games give players a space to experience both the thrill of feeling powerfully intimidating and the challenge of being disempowered and fighting to survive.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre pioneered the ‘final girl’ in Sally, the victim who manages to survive against the most desperate odds. Narrowly escaping the family in the back of a speeding pickup truck, she’s last seen covered head to toe in blood and hysterically laughing as the figure of the pursuing Leatherface shrinks to a pinprick on the horizon. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre game and the new wave of asymmetrical horror games awakens the final girl in all players: who will survive and what will be left of them?