Slayaway camp – Review
Follow Genre: Casual, Strategy
Developer: Blue Wizard Digital
Publisher: Blue Wizard Digital
Platform: PC, Mac
Tested On: PC (Linux)

Slayaway camp – Review

Site Score
9.0
Good: 80s horror gore meets Sokoban
Bad: No animal cruelty
User Score
9.5
(2 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 9.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Once in a while you come across a title that has such a simple concept but is ingeniously put together. We found Slayaway camp is exactly that as in this isometric puzzle world (Sokoban anyone?) you take on the role of a vicious murderer who in true 80’s horror style slashes, squashes and decapitates his victims. Get your hockey-mask and some sharp blades as you prepare to take on the worst of the worst: teenagers and their camp counselors.

slayaway-header

Story

What can we tell about the story of Slayaway Camp? Probably that it is as thin as the storyline of the 80’s horror movies the game pays an homage to. In fact, you might say that there is not a story at all and the only thing there is to do is in this game is to hack away at unsuspecting teenagers with raging hormones and their annoying camp counselors who are always looking for a happy place in the world. Luckily we can count on Skullface and his menacing friends (and mom!) to teach them a timely but most of all bloody lesson. The puzzles are grouped together in scenes of different movies with exciting titles like ‘Slayaway Camp’, ‘Slayaway Camp 2: Return to Slayaway Camp’, ‘SlayAway Camp 2.5: (Another) Return to Slayaway Camp’, ‘Slayaway Camp 3D’, ‘Slayaway Camp 4: Slash’Em High’, … I guess you catch our drift.

slayaway-1

Graphics

The graphics of Slayaway camp are a pleasure to view. When starting the game you drop into a eighties video store, on the shelves there are different movies you can access and the TV is showing some old-school 8-bit graphics while doubling as the game menu. After you selected a movie and scene you drop into an isometric view which you can switch to top-down if you need to have a better look at the situation. The levels and characters are formed of big pixels making the game look slightly like Minecraft.

When you are solving puzzles and move in for a kill often you switch to a cut-scene where you can watch your victim slowly being decapitated, pruned, origami’d, sawed, hollowed or undergoing one of the many other original ways to get rid of an annoying presence. One thing all manners have in common is plenty of gore and blood, albeit in a quite playful way.

slayaway-3

Sound

Immediately as you start the game you are presented with an 80’s style dark synthesizer soundtrack. This continues on throughout the game only being disturbed by the sound of your victims crying for help or the police busting you when you made a wrong move. All the sound effects are very nice and really contribute to the game experience. It’s one thing to origami your victim, it’s another hearing the bones being removed from their skin. When you are navigating through the menu you are treated with beeps and bops like in the old days.

slayaway-2

Gameplay

The main objective of Slayaway Camp is of course to solve puzzles in the isometric world. You do this by telling your killer of choice to move in a certain direction. He will run as far as possible in that direction and any characters that are on his path will be killed. Any characters that are close by or witness a killing will run away from you. You can take advantage of this as you can let them run to their own drowning or elektrocution but sometimes you have to avoid it as there are also doors in certain levels through which they can escape. Each puzzle represents a scene in a movie and the final scene always is to get rid of the camp counselor. If you make a mistake you can easily “rewind the tape” to go back a few steps or even all the way back to the beginning. If you have too much difficulty with a certain puzzle you can also fast-forward to get tips on how to solve it.

slayaway-5

Next to the teenagers and camp counselors you can also encounter police offers who will arrest you if you approach them directly. Luckily you can distract them by ringing a telephone and they also can be killed if you can sneak up on them as they are not the brightest of the bunch. Their SWAT friends however are more difficult to get rid off and they have laser-mounted guns to take you out from a distance. In some puzzles they are hot on your heels and you have to finish the puzzle in a limited amount of moves. Finally you can also encounter cats in the game and as you know animal cruelty is a big no-no in movie world so be careful you don’t kill them by accident by running into them or scaring them into one of the many dangers in the world.

slayaway-4

After each puzzle there is a short cut-scene where you have to hit the attack button at just the right time to deliver a finishing blow to a victim, earning you extra points. You can use these points to unlock more murderers or gore action packs. New movies become available as you progress and also new DLC is released by the developer every now and then, introducing even more ways and locations to kill people.

slayaway-6

Conclusion

Slayaway Camp is a highly addictive casual game which you’ll put on to play for 5 minutes but end up playing hours so make sure you don’t do it during your coffee break or you might find your boss impersonating one of the characters in the game. A chuckle was brought to our face multiple times while playing this game and it is definitely a must-have if you are into puzzle games. The 80s horror aspect is just nice bonus points.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 9.5/10 (2 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
Slayaway camp - Review, 9.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

No Comments

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.