Terrifier: The ARTcade Game Review

Terrifier: The ARTcade Game is a horror-themed retro beat ‘em up developed by Relevo and published by Selecta Play. Apparently, this is a licensed game based on the Terrifier films… which I didn’t know existed, because I’m a scaredy cat and my entire horror movie experience is just random clips of the good Scary Movie films and I think Zombieland. Yeah… I can’t appreciate this game as much as I should, but hey! It might actually get me into the franchise.

The game centres around the franchise’s main killer, Art The Clown, as he rampages through a film set based on, well, Art himself. I guess this movie is about to become a whole lot real for a few hundred people. But he’s not alone, as three more players can join at any time and become one of the other killers like The Pale Little Girl, Vicky Hayes, and… some dude I can’t really find anything on because none of the characters have their names on the character select.

Its graphics remind me of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game – Complete Edition. From the characters evoking Bryan Lee O'Malley’s artwork and the backgrounds looking like they’re from Toronto, Canada, I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s intentionally doing so… except it’s a whole lot bloodier with many more limbs and heads flying off. It’s a little cruder, but it works for the retro-style it’s going for. However, slaying in silence would be boring, but luckily the chiptune soundtrack is really well done to fit the utter destruction you’ll wreak.

But enough about its presentation, how about the gameplay? Well, let’s start with all the different ways to play. You can go through the story and murder everyone who thought it was a good idea to film a movie about an active serial killer, dive into Arcade mode to try to rack up a high score, or see who’s the best killer in Versus. There are also a few options locked behind the completion of Story Mode, so you might want to tackle that first before you do anything else. I personally just focused on the main campaign.

Once you’ve selected a character, get ready to slaughter some victims. You’ll be advancing through a stage in order to get to the boss at the end and kill them for their foolishness. You’ll encounter tons of resistance, but if there’s anything I know about slasher villains, it’s that they don’t die without a fight… but their combat ability isn’t that great, to be honest.

Fighting is pretty basic; you can perform light attacks, a heavy attack, a special attack, pick up weapons and throw them, dash, and dodge. There are no combos other than spamming the light attack button with a heavy attack ender. The special attack, though, will deal good damage and knock down enemies, great for when you’re overwhelmed. However, it isn’t a slasher without a fantastical way of mutilating innocent people.

When an enemy loses all their HP, there’s a chance you can perform a finisher on them; gory displays of sadism in all its 16-bit glory. However, each character only has two, so you’re going to see them all in a minute, and the only benefit of doing them is for the invincibility frames and the spray of blood and viscera on the screen. Honestly, it can get to the point of being distracting, especially when parts of the environment block your view.

Speaking of being annoying, enemies can be a pain to deal with as they’ll block constantly, toss items from afar, and shoot you while doing your combos. Also, you can’t take too many hits and health pickups are rare, so if you’re playing by yourself like me, then I hope you like being beaten to a pulp. That being said, they're also really dumb. They’ll walk into traps repeatedly while you can just stand there and do nothing. At least when you run out of lives, you can select a new character and continue your slaughter without missing out much on the action (though you only have so many credits before you run out).

The worst thing about the game, though, is its bugs. There were issues with audio, the hit boxes, and sometimes even button presses. But that’s nothing compared to the true gamebreaker where every time a new stage starts, the characters don't show up. Can't do anything other than go to the main menu and restart (from a checkpoint, thank god). It kills the pacing and is quite aggravating to do. Hopefully this is patched soon.

Also, I noticed there isn't an option to exit to the desktop. I had to switch tabs to Steam and quit from there. This is frankly the first time in a while that I haven’t seen it. As for technical performance, it ran pretty well at a constant 60 FPS all the way through. No matter how insane it got, I didn’t experience any frame drops. The load times weren't too bad either.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really enjoy Terrifier: The ARTcade Game all that much. I didn't hate it, but it could be so much better. If this came out during the era of Xbox Live Arcade, this would’ve been a very competent title that wouldn’t be a bad time for fans of the Terrifier franchise, but it’s not 2010 anymore and there are tons of better beat ‘em ups already out or will come out with a much more interesting gameplay loop that doesn’t stop me from playing every few minutes. If you can look past its flaws and get some friends, you’ll find a quick and easy slaughterfest. For anyone else… you might want to look elsewhere.