Halloween Game Preview: IllFonic's New Asymmetrical Horror

Developer Illfonic is mostly known for making some really spooky 1v4 asymmetrical horror multiplayer games based on existing properties. In 2017, they released a Friday the 13th game in which one player controls Jason Voorhees and the others play as camp counselors. In 2020, they released Predator: Hunting Grounds, in which one player controls a Predator who faces off against military operatives. And, most recently, they made Killer Klowns from Outer Space in 2024, where, you guessed it, a group of Klowns go up against humans trying to escape; the main difference in that last one is that there are three Klowns instead of just one single powerful entity.

Illfonic is back again with yet another horror multiplayer game. This time around, it's based on the iconic film franchise, Halloween, starring none other than Michael Myers, the terrifying (and unkillable) Boogeyman who is known for murdering his sister, gets taken to a Sanitarium, and then escapes to return to his hometown to kill even more people, and to make it even scarier, he comes back on Halloween. Now, if you're reading this, you probably don't need more lore dumps about Michael Myers and the John Carpenter franchise —you want to know about the game coming out in October.

Well, I had the opportunity to check out Illfonic's Halloween at PAX East 2026 in Boston the other day and spent some time playing as both Myers and the residents of Haddonfield. While I did have some fun during the 20-minute session, I was left confused about what exactly sets Halloween apart from all the other asymmetrical games that have come out in the last decade.

Stalking as Michael

The first thing I want to mention about my demo experience is that, for whatever reason, the frame rate took a significant hit when playing as Michael Myers. Playing as one of the resident survivors felt way smoother and more stable. I know the game is coming out in about five months, and I expect this issue to be rectified, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.

The basic premise of playing Myers is that you need to go around the suburban neighborhood of Haddonfield and use your powers to stalk the residents and eventually kill them to prevent them from escaping (or worse, sending Myers back to where he came from). Myers walks very slowly, as any horror villain should, but he has a special ability that lets him move forward really quickly, like a spectral ghoul, to sneak through the streets to get the upper hand on the other players. However, you can only use this move when you're out of the light and not in the line of sight of another player. You also can't back out of the ability in these situations either, so you can't just spam the move and go right up to a player and get your stab on-- it's mostly meant to provide faster travel outside instead of always having to walk slowly. There's also a cooldown on it, too.

At the start of the round, you get objectives to kill several different NPCs in town, and if you succeed, you will get extra rewards at the end of the match. These NPCs are usually just hanging around inside their homes. They are pretty defenseless, but killing them will also make it easier to catch the other players, because the residents can get assistance from said NPCs. For example, the other players can speak to them and ask them to call 911 to get the cops involved, and these NPCs will cause way more trouble for Myers since they'll actually attack you and start shooting without a moment's notice.

Something that was really annoying during my time at Myers is that it took a couple of moments to tell which townsfolk were AI-controlled and which were human-controlled players. There didn't seem to be any indicators telling me what was what, so I just had to watch their movements to figure it out. Of course, once they started running away from me or attacking me with calculated movements, I knew who was who.

In my experience, Myers has only his knife at his disposal. Still, I saw in the gameplay trailers that you can pull off some neat interactable kills, like slamming someone's head with a refrigerator door or placing someone on a weight bench and using the equipment to end their life. I didn't pull any of these off in my demo, nor did I experience it when I played as one of the survivors, but from what I can tell, these can be easier to perform if you stalk the residents without making them aware of your presence. I'm not sure exactly how it all works, but you get more points as Myers when you watch other players from the outside, acting like a super creepy killer.

If you end up getting attacked by the residents or the police, which can easily happen due to all the different weapons they can find by looting, Myers will eventually get stunned and fall to the ground for a few seconds, giving the other players some time to escape and work towards finding an exit. The amount of damage that Myers can take before taking a fall felt pretty fair to me, so I never felt overwhelmed or defenseless. In fact, because the residents have the option to hurt Michael in a bunch of ways, I liked it compared to other games of this nature, like Dead By Daylight, where the killer feels OP compared to the survivors who can pretty much only run away and hope to live another day.

Surviving as a Haddonfield Resident

I enjoyed my time as one of the survivors much more than my time playing as Michael Myers, because there's a lot more to do. Apparently, not only can you win a match and escape by finding a hatch, but you can also leave via car, and, if you work extremely well with your teammates and the police, you can actually apprehend Myers and lock him in the back of a cop car to send him back to the Sanitarium (temporarily, of course).

In my two gameplay sessions, Myers came out on top both times, but as I said, it feels like you have more of a chance to survive and escape than you do in other asymmetrical horror games. You can search through so many drawers and cabinets and boxes around the neighborhood to find pistols, rifles, shotguns, throwing darts, melee weapons, and more things to defend yourself against the Boogeyman. He cannot die, but if you work together, you can really get the jump on him, knock him down a peg, and show him who's boss.

We didn't get many details on this during the demo, but there will be a progression system for the survivors, and each survivor will have unique perks and abilities that set them apart. I expect some characters to have more power in their attacks, for example, or another player who has a higher chance of finding certain weapons.

Besides trying to escape from Myers, one of the residents' main goals is to find the NPC neighbors and speak with them to get them to call the police or ask for help in other ways. There's literally a dialog box that appears when you talk to them, which can feel out of place when you have a masked murderer coming after you. Also, I'm not sure if you can find a way to contact the authorities without the help of the NPCs, which is a little weird (there are phones all over the place, for crying out loud!).

Another negative I have with the NPCs is that they move so irrationally, even when Myers is around. They're saying random things and doing random things in their home, and are just kind of there to help you. The system feels undercooked—and because it’s so central to how matches play out, that lack of polish is hard to ignore. Again, this could be something that gets fixed down the line as the developers get closer to launch.

All in all, if you liked Illfonic's past games like Friday the 13th and other games of this genre like Dead by Daylight, there's some fun to be had here, especially with friends on Discord. I did laugh quite a bit at how ridiculous it all is, and the concept is still hard to beat, but I hope the final release has more polish and shine and can differentiate itself from these other games in a big way. We'll see what happens when Halloween launches on October 8.