Halloween: The Game vs Friday the 13th: The Game

Why these two get compared

This is the comparison that matters, and most coverage buries the reason. Friday the 13th: The Game was developed by IllFonic and published by Gun Media. Halloween: The Game is developed by IllFonic and co-published by Gun Interactive — the same studio and the same publisher, nine years later, on a different slasher licence. Players making the comparison in reviews are not reaching; they are recognising a lineage.

The other reason is availability. Friday the 13th was delisted after a legal dispute over the rights to the source material, and Steam no longer sells it — its store page has no price. That history hangs over any licensed slasher game from the same team, and it is the context behind a lot of the questions people ask about this one's future.

What has changed between them is worth naming plainly: this game ships with a single-player story mode, which Friday the 13th only ever offered as offline bot matches. IllFonic's CCO has said the single-player component is what they believed would set this project apart from the rest of the genre.

Documented specifications

The Halloween column is sourced from the PlayStation game page and the Steam listing. The Friday the 13th: The Gamecolumn carries only widely-published facts about that game — we do not document someone else’s mechanics second-hand.

The honest bottom line

The honest framing is continuity rather than competition: you cannot buy Friday the 13th any more, so this is not a choice between two games. It is the same team's next attempt at the format, with a story mode bolted on and a licence that is not currently in dispute. If you played Friday the 13th and want to know whether this feels like it, the answer from reviews is broadly yes — and that is the reviewers' judgement, not ours.

Common questions

Which is better, Halloween or Friday the 13th: The Game?

We are not answering that. Halloween releases September 8, 2026 and nobody outside the studio has played the retail build, so a head-to-head verdict written today would be invented. The table on this page compares what is documented instead.

Is Halloween the same kind of game as Friday the 13th: The Game?

Both are tag characters, but the formats differ — see the specification table for team size and the rest of the documented differences.

Other comparisons