10 Recent Video Games Sent Out To Die

I was surprised by how much I loved the Texas Chain Saw Massacre game. Despite not being a huge fan of other asymmetrical horror releases, Texas Chain Saw's twist on the formula, pitting four villains against four survivors rather than having just one killer, turned out to be the secret sauce for delivering a fresh cat-and-mouse experience. 

It helped that it was a horror fan's dream come true in terms of presentation as well, with the characters and iconography of the classic original movie being lovingly translated to video game form. For die-hards, it was as much of a kick to simply walk around the Sawyer family abode as it was to chainsaw the head off someone's shoulders. 

Despite its promise though, it was annoyingly clear from launch that Texas Chain Saw might not have the legs to see it succeed for years to come. For one, this is a notoriously difficult sub-genre to garner popularity in, as other attempts like Evil Dead: The Game ultimately failed to attract enough attention to justify long-term support (despite also being a quality offering).

Another issue stemmed from a fundamental problem with the game itself though. See, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, despite being a longstanding franchise boasting nine movies, is mired in a licensing cobweb. As such, the developers of the game only had the license to the original movie, meaning that locations, characters and story beats from the other eight instalments couldn't be leveraged for a DLC roadmap. 

That severely limited the game's potential in terms of future maps, playable heroes and villains, and even cosmetic unlocks. That's why the title in its current form features newly created characters to fill out the roster, rather than any recognisable faces pulled from other movies.

That decision, plus market factors, would knee-cap the potential longevity of any release, and as such the average Steam playerbase for Texas Chain Saw dropped from 10,000 at launch, to just over 900 as of December.