Camp Keepalive is what happens when turn-based strategy meets an 80s slasher movie

Friday the 13th gave us so many things: a much better sequel, the first of many on-screen deaths for Kevin 'I just wanna dance/turn invisible/sell mobile phones' Bacon, and an abiding fear of going anywhere near teenagers, lest Jason Voorhees turns up to get creative with his machete. However, it's also indirectly responsible - along with the tremendous Sleepaway Camp - for the upcoming turn-based splattery game (see what I did there?) Camp Keepalive , so I guess it's not all bad. (I replaced the word 'strategy' with 'splattery', is what I'm saying.) Your job is to "save the helpless and dull-witted campers from an onslaught of monsters with a team of counsellors, each with a special power." I have been waiting for this game my whole life.

The following video doesn't quite live up to the initial pitch, but I feel this is a game you need to play to really appreciate. Thankfully you can, as there's a demo available just here . As the trailer makes clear, it's not just immortal serial killers that are on the campers' trails; it's werewolves, dudes with chainsaws, and things that look a bit like Swamp Thing. The full version of Camp Keepalive will feature "more monster types and counselors, as well as a Camp Mode, a multi-map gameplay mode where your every decision could come back to haunt you..."

Many thanks to RPS .

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.