Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle review for Xbox One, Switch, PC

On some level, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle should probably be docked a few points for being a reskinned version of Slayaway Camp. Like, it?s pretty much the exact same game, with the only real difference being that the killer here is Jason Voorhees, rather than a killer who looks kind of like Jason Voorhees. Beyond that, they?re practically identical.

However, I?m more than willing to overlook that for a couple of reasons.

First, the same developer made both games. Even if they?re stealing, they?re only doing it from themselves.

Second, as much as I enjoyed Slayaway Camp, I can still admit that its performance — at least on the Vita — was pretty brutal. Loading screens lasted forever, crashes weren?t uncommon, music didn?t always play, the action constantly stuttered — the list of technical issues was a lengthy one, and it made it difficult to fully enjoy the game. Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle remedies all those issues, and repackages the game in a way that actually works.

Third (and most important), Slayaway Camp was so much fun that I?m not going to complain about getting a chance to play it again, especially if I?m getting a chance to play it again without all the technical hiccups. Being merely competent is a hugely underrated thing, so being a competent game that?s also genuinely fun makes Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle well worth a shot if you?re a fan of puzzlers or if you like your games blood-soaked. And if you?re a fan of blood-soaked puzzlers? Well, then you?re really in luck.

Because — as I may have said a few times before — Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle does everything that Slayaway Camp did, just without the accompanying flaws. You slide Jason around a board, killing everyone on the board in inventively gory ways. You drown them, you set them on fire, you topple outhouses on top of them — and that?s not even getting into all the weapons at your disposal. Jason has everything from baseball bats, to pitchforks, to paint rollers, to car doors, and you can use them however you see fit, assuming that you?re looking to use them to kill punks, police, campers, and everyone else — except, of course, for cats, which you?re not supposed to touch. The levels are all nicely laid out, and, with the exception of the few levels where you have a set number of moves before your time runs out, they give you lots of opportunities to approach your killing spree however you see fit.

To be sure, none of this will be that new if you played Slayaway Camp. But this is one of those cases where that doesn?t matter. It basically comes down to ?If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it? — only with the added bonus that everything that was broken when it came to Slayaway Camp is entirely fixed in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle.

Blue Wizard Digital provided us with a Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Xbox One code for review purposes.