Since 1988, Chucky has been asking us if we want to play.
So what have we been waiting for? Sure, societal norms took a while to get out of their own way. Concerns over violence in video games certainly would have made a solid Child’s Play adaptation a tough nut to crack in the ‘90s, but it’s a resilient franchise with a ton of brand recognition. Surely there have been tie-in games in the years since – great games. Games worth celebrating.
And so we turn our attention to every Chucky video game ever made, in order of release. All two of them. Two and a half, if we’re being generous.
Chucky: Wanna Play? (2012, rhetorically)
A decade and some change ago, the horror landscape looked a lot different. So did the Child’s Play franchise. In 2011, the most recent entry in the series was Seed of Chucky, a big swing with mixed results that got 75% too cute 100% of the time.
Maybe that’s why the powers that be decided it was best to branch out in new directions, licensing Chucky out to the video game developers at TikGames, a little company with big dreams and a glass-is-half-full attitude about the public’s willingness to crowdfund stuff. The result was very nearly Chucky: Wanna Play?, a killer doll simulator without equal. TikGames asked fans for just shy of $1 million to help them finish development. Fans politely declined.
The stinker of the whole situation is that Chucky: Wanna Play? looks like it would have been a fun time. Test footage of the game’s first level takes viewers to Andy Barclay’s old Chicago apartment, by way of the growing-boy Xenomorph sequences from Aliens vs. Predator 2. Revolutionary? Maybe not, but it would’ve been cool to see what the team could have come up with, given the proper funding. After all, this was the company that made Texas Hold ‘Em for XBox Live. They clearly had stories to tell.
Chucky: Slash & Dash (2013)
Luckily, fans of the franchise didn’t have long to wait before the Lakeshore Strangler got his proper video game debut. This being the early to mid-2010s, however, it was a debut that will, with the benefit of hindsight, make contemporary gamers sigh dramatically and stare into the middle distance for a while.
Chucky: Slash & Dash is a mobile game that begs the question “What if we reskinned Temple Run again?” This time, the runner was Chucky (or Tiffany), and the temple was an infinite Good Guy doll factory that Chucky (or Tiffany) was in. Chucky – or Tiffany – could slash up security guards as they ran endlessly into forever. Collectible currency could be used to buy power ups. You get it. Nobody liked Slash & Dash. It was delisted from the App Store in 2014 and, unlike Chucky, it was never resurrected.
Dead By Daylight: Chucky (2023)
First released in 2016, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer game in which players take the role of either one of four (4) survivors, or one of one (1) murder monsters. The murder monster tries to hunt down the survivors in the hopes of making the “survivors” designation seem ironic and sad.
The game on its own is a treat, but what really brings the experience together is the DLC. Over a dozen character packs and skins have dropped in the years since DbD’s debut, allowing gamers to step into the shoes of horror icons like Pinhead, Ghostface, and Nicolas Cage. As more and more recognizable IPs were added to the universe, horror fans asked the question that well-meaning adults in the periphery of Andy Barclay have been asking for decades, right before getting their necks stabbed out: “Where’s Chucky?”
The answer came in 2023, with the announced addition of a Chucky-themed DLC to the game. The extra content will let players enjoy a few rounds as either Chucky or – and this is important – Tiffany, voiced, as is tradition, by Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly, respectively.
Anticipation regarding the expansion pack is high. Some look forward to what might finally be a worthy interactive Chucky experience, while others worry that the OP, Oddjob-in-Goldeneye size differential of this newest villain will make the game unplayable. Internet commenters seem convinced that it will either be the best addition to the game in its long, exciting history, or will fail so catastrophically that the world will end. Internet commenters are like that.
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