Sumo Digital's Kelvin Moore and Darren Campion walk us through The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's unique take on asymmetrical horror.

“You’re gonna hear the word authentic a lot,” Sumo Digital executive producer Darren Campion tells me as I sit down to talk to him about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at EGX. Judging by the eerily lifelike Leatherface mask staring at me as I enter the room, I’ve got a feeling that he’s right.

Revealed during The Game Awards last year, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an asymmetrical horror game that has players being put on a team of either four victims or three of the family members from the original film, made up of the series’ masthead Leatherface and his brothers, known only as The Cook and The Hitchhiker.

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With recent games in the genre going for more violence and action, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre looks to bring the horror side of things back in interesting ways, all while focusing on creating an experience that could only be done with this IP. Although I wasn’t able to play it for myself at EGX, I did get to see a decent amount of pre-recorded gameplay and speak to both Campion and the game’s project design director Kelvin Moore about what to expect.

But first, let’s swing back to that word - “authentic”. Campion explains that although the team isn’t recreating the original film, they wanted to create something that only the Texas Chain Saw Massacre IP could do. This was done by having certain actors return for their characters, sending location scouts to Texas to take photos of the dirt and flowers, and getting the story approved by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre co-creator Kim Henkel.

This philosophy of authenticity and being true to the universe extends to the decision to make The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a three-versus-four experience, different from other asymmetrical horror titles like Dead by Daylight or Evil Dead. Rather than following that formula, Sumo and Gun have opted for all three members of the family: Leatherface, The Cook, and The Hitchhiker, to all be playable on one team.

“It’s about these three brothers who live together,” Campion explains. “They all need each other to survive. Leatherface can't live on his own. The Hitchhiker’s a bit too chaotic to live on his own. You need The Cook to wrangle them together. They've all got their role in the family and it's the same in the game. They've all got their role in the hunt and stopping these victims from escaping.”

Recent asymmetrical horror games like Evil Dead: The Game have turned the formula on its head a bit by giving survivor players the ability to fight back against the horror. However, that’s not the approach that Sumo and Gun have taken for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,, feeling that it was important to keep the “victims” weak to create a horror experience.

This is reflected by the family only being able to be stunned and the victims having a bigger focus on stealth and sneaking around, instead of taking the offensive. For those worried that it might seem a little one-sided on the Family’s side, well, that’s the point.

“It's an asymmetrical horror game, and you can't create a horror experience if you're empowering victims,” Campion explains. “We've been very careful since the early days of making sure that you don't feel empowered. You're not going up to the family and thinking ‘I would just knock them out and take them down’. It's like no, you're fearful, you see these people and you know you need to run.”

That isn’t to say that the victims are completely powerless, though. Each of them has a unique ability that they can use, such as being able to knock an enemy down once in a match, and they’re all more agile than the family. This also plays into the game’s bigger emphasis on stealth, which Moore calls the “secret weapon” of the victims, something that’s made clear by how dark some of the corners of the house are, and how much of the footage shows victims just hiding in the shadows as the family runs by.

Without having had the chance to play the game for myself, it’s hard to say how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is coming along. However, from Campion and Moore’s reverence for the series, what I’ve been told, and what I’ve seen in gameplay clips, it’s shaping up to be both a unique take on the asymmetrical horror genre, and a love letter to fans of the series that earns the right to call itself “authentic”.

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George is the Lead News Editor for TheGamer, and an advocate for Psychonauts goggle-wearing. He's notorious for caring far too much about platforming mascots. He tries, bless him.