It’s taken a long time to get horror icon Chucky from the Child’s Play series a game of his own.
After a few false starts over the years it seems the recent release of Curse of Chucky has finally made it happen. Slimstown Studios have just released Chucky: Slash & Dash, the first licensed Chucky game ever.
We caught up with Amar Gavhane, the Director of Marketing & PR at Slimstown Studios to find out more about the game, talk about the challenges of bringing Chucky to life in a game, and discover why they chose to do an endless runner.
Chucky: Slash & Dash is currently in the works. What can fans of the iconic horror character look forward to?
They can look forward to having some visceral fun running around as Chucky, stabbing enemies as they revisit some familiar places from the movies. We’ve got some audio clips from the movies in the game, too, so they’ll probably get a chuckle, so to speak, out of playing the game too.
The game is an endless runner. Why did you decide to put Chucky into that type of game rather than a platformer or point-and-click?
We felt it was the best balance of accessibility and fit for the platform. Having watched all the Chucky movies ourselves, we thought it would be more fun to play as Chucky instead of as a potential victim. Platformers can be fun on mobile devices, but the controls aren’t always as tight as you might want them to be. It just wouldn’t do to have Chucky in a non-action-oriented genre either, like a puzzle or adventure game. A runner just felt right, especially if you remember how creepy it was when you got some glances of him running around in the first movie!
The mobile gaming market is flooded with endless runners at the moment. What sets Chucky: Slash & Dash apart from everything else out there?
Aside from having the ruthless redhead himself, players really get to take out enemies. Chucky have a few different kill movies, including one in which he jumps on an enemy, flips over to his back, then stabs him in the neck. It’s pretty satisfying, in a cathartic sort of way. A lot of runners tend to have the camera behind the player the whole game, but in Chucky: Slash & Dash, we have three different camera angles, so players can get a really good look at the character they’re playing outside of the menus.
Chucky: Slash & Dash is the first licensed Chucky game to hit the gaming market. Why has it taken so long to turn the franchise into a game?
That’s a great question. Horror movie monsters have had games as far back as the days of the NES, so it is a wonder it’s taken so long to get Chucky one. I think part of it is that some licensed games back in the day weren’t so great, so companies rightly became more protective of their brands and wanted to make sure it was the right fit before agreeing to anything.
Fans of Chucky are very particular about the way he looks. What did you do to recreate his likeness and ensure that you got it spot on?
We looked at the way he looked in each movie In the early ones, he looked a lot more like a traditional doll, whereas in the later ones he almost looked like a little human being. We liked how cool he looked in his “damaged” form and based the model in the game off of that look. We worked especially closely with Universal to make sure we got his look just right.
The game takes place in the Good Guy factory. Did you refer back to the movies to create the location or have you created a new vision for the game?
Both, actually. Some of the game’s environments come from the movies themselves, especially the second one. They didn’t literally walk through every part of the factory sequentially, though, so we had to get imaginative and created the whole thing from start to finish.
Do you feel a lot of pressure in bringing Chucky into the gaming world for the first time?
Well, sure, when you’re working on a series you love, whether it’s a game or movie (or in this case both), you want to make sure it’s as good as possible. We felt some pressure there, but we knew we had assembled a solid development team, so we knew they’d make a great game, no matter what.
Will Chucky: Slash & Dash eventually go onto other platforms or will it stay exclusively for smartphones and tablet devices?
It will probably remain as a mobile game. It’ll be out first for iOS platforms, and we do plan on getting it out for Android, too. I don’t think runners in general are as enjoyable on other platforms compared to phones and tablets.
Do you think we’ll see more Chucky games from Slimstown in the future?
Heck, we’d love to make more Chucky games! If Chucky: Slash & Dash does well, you can bet our imaginations will be running wild with visions of what other kinds of Chucky games we could make.
What other games is Slimstown working on at the moment?
We have a few products we’re working on, but nothing that’s far enough down the pipeline to talk about now. We did put out a catapult-style game called Dragonbites: Smokin’ Bunnies earlier this year that people can check out on the App Store for free, though!
Chucky: Slash and Dash is available for iOS now. Check out the teaser trailer below:
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