Slayaway Camp review - A puzzler that's dripping with gore and good ideas

If there ever comes a time when evidence is presented in the great “are videogames too violent?” debate/haranguing then you can bet that Slayaway Camp is going to be featured somewhere.

It’s a game that glories in butchery. It wants you to buy new special moves with in-game currency, and all of those moves are gorey and vile. Full of cute characters being ripped limb from limb.

And at the same time it’s a gleeful homage to the slasher films of the 80’s. Dripping with references as much as it drips with viscera. The game underneath it all has a lot going for it too.

To all intents and purposes, the game is a puzzler. You’re playing a psychotic murderer who’s on a rampage through the titular camp. Think Jason Voorhees in Lego form.

You move around the small levels by swiping on the screen. And you’ll slide until you hit something that stops your momentum. If it’s one of you youths enjoying their time at the camp, you’ll murder them.

The aim of the game is to kill all of the victims in a level, then make it to the hell portal that opens up when they’ve all been suitably dismembered.

Things start off simple, but it doesn’t take long before the game is throwing new ideas at you. There are cops that’ll smack your face in if you stop near them, fire pits to avoid and chase your victims in to.

Telephones can be used to distract victims, and all manner of items can be pushed over to squish anyone unlucky enough to be underneath them.

You even get QTE slaughter at the end of each level that lets you nab more coins. It’s violent, it’s clever, and if you’re a fan of the horror movie you’re going to spend a lot of time giggling as well.

This is the sort of game that wears other people’s hearts on its grimy sleeve. And it does that because it just cut them out in a glorious orgy of pixelated hacking and slashing.

But peel away the gore and the chunks of mangled body parts and you’ll find a smart and addictive puzzler underneath it all.

It’s a complete package, and if you like scratching your head while a masked maniac throws axes around, then you’re going to absolutely love it.