This week brought the sad news that "Friday the 13th: The Game," which has never been easy over the years, is ticking away the days until its closure. Publisher Gun Media's license will expire on December 31 of this year, at which point the game developed by Illfonic will no longer be available for sale and will cease operations altogether at the end of 2024. It is a sad end for a genuinely great asymmetrical horror experience.

And just like the film, Jason Voorhees will rise again. This is according to composer Harry Manfredini, who spoke with Rely on Horror about how he composed the music for the 2017 game (creating a unique score for each player in a " module of the material"), he talked a bit about it. Manfredini has been composing music for Friday the 13th since the original film, and it is fair to describe his work as iconic within the slasher flick genre.

The new, as-yet-unannounced "Friday the 13th" game is not being developed by Ilfonic, nor is it being participated in by Gun Media (honestly, one can hardly blame them, given their experience with the previous film). According to Manfredini, it will feature "more realistic" characters and will have a different style than the asymmetrical multiplayer design of the 2017 game. Other details about the new title are unknown, but fans will at least be comforted to try again.

The history of "Friday the 13th" in gaming is a long one, especially with Gunn's game, which felt it had found the right niche for it; it's not too hard to look at something like "Dead by Daylight" and find similarities, but the nature of Jason and his ill-fated crew of people around him was so well suited to that particular setting that it wouldn't be surprising to see a licensed title even more faithful to the DBD model. There are, of course, any number of other directions that could be taken, the most obvious being a single-player horror game (there was also a pretty good puzzle game a few years ago, but surprisingly it was discontinued due to licensing issues). In any case, one Jason Voorhees is suffering and slowly dying: and here is another Jason Voorhees to take his place.