The newest horror icon to be reinvigorated through a video game is Killer Klowns From Outer Space from Teravision Games. Announced during Gamescom, this asymmetrical horror game appears to have teams of players terrorizing the town of Watsonville all while another team of survivors does what they can to stop the oncoming menace. On the surface, this might seem fun - but it's a genre trope that has been used repeatedly with horror licenses.

From Evil Dead to Friday the 13th to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, every licensed horror IP seems to be this simple multiplayer formula. It's clear the popularity of another multiplayer asymmetrical game, Dead by Daylight, has put a leash on what horror games can be. Even newer properties like the now-defunct Video Horror Society have slapped the early years of horror into the same gameplay as all the others.

The idea is solid in the business sense - take a known franchise with a built-in fanbase that will gobble up anything new, slap a basic gameplay loop on it, and push it out the door. There is no need to craft a well-told story, no giant boss fights with new monsters based on the old movies, and not a lot of voice acting is required. It's hard to argue against the idea of simply making a Dead by Daylight clone. What this doesn't do, however, is create positive horror experiences.

The Harry Potter game is a beautiful recreation of Hogwarts in the 1800s that players will be able to live in and enjoy, crafting their own adventure and learning the history of the school, as well as the franchise. In 2010, Back to the Future was lovingly retold by Telltale in an adventure that had players flying through time.

Creating a single-player experience from a movie is possible, and has been done many times. However, games based on horror franchises always seem to fall into the same "cheap way out" option. Perhaps that's a reflection of the horror genre itself, it's rarely taken seriously and often done with tiny budgets.

What games like Dead by Daylight do is remove the actual scare element of horror. The only focus of these games is doing menial tasks to escape while avoiding a big bad monster. The repetition of it eventually kills the fear and turns it into a job. It becomes as simple as "fix this while a coworker walks around trying to smack everyone with a machete." It's like watching the same movie over and over again; eventually, the scary monster becomes a joke.

There are plenty of examples of good licensed horror games; Alien Isolation is one of the most intense and enjoyable single-player experiences out there. Even classics like the NES version of Friday the 13th had players navigating Crystal Lake cabins, hunting Jason while he hunts campers. Horror can be done beautifully in video games as a single-player crafted story.

The best use of a Killer Klowns From Outer Space license would be an open-world destruction game like Destroy All Humans. Players could make a custom clown with upgradable abilities and spend hours turning the citizens of Watsonville into giant cotton candy cocoons. But instead, players will be stuck with the same old forgettable multiplayer mess, which is a real shame.