I’m a big fan of Art the Clown and the Terrifier franchise. I wrote reviews for both Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, so you know that when they announced a game I had to check it out. I’m old enough to remember when movie games were released they were almost always without fail some of the most broken, unplayable, soulless cash grabs in history. Does Terrifier: The ARTcade Game slash the stereotype? Find out in our review!
Terrifier: The ARTcade Game
Developer: Relevo
Publisher: Selecta Play
Platforms: Windows PC (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Price: $19.99
Ya know, I’m trying my best not to be a bit of a snob when it comes to the sudden success of the Terrifier franchise and seeing Art the Clown plastered all over everything at Hot Topic and Spencer’s Gifts when I visit the local mall, but movies with visceral realistic gnarly gore simply aren’t supposed to cater to the masses. Terrifier clicks with people because Art is unabashedly hilarious while unrepentant and brutal, so it removes all the scare and just leaves comedic murderporn. A far cry from the tone of Terrifier 1 where he excrusiatingly saws a girl in half, Terrifier 2 sees Art get even more ridiculous and most of us will have the scene where the boyfriend gets out of the car to take a piss and Art chops his dick off and rubs it on the window etched in their brains forever.
That level of humor is slightly above what’s materalized in Terrifier: The ARTcade Game. The story of this game is that you are trying to kill the people who are making movies about you, so aside from level four where you are inside Art’s mind for some reason other than seemingly to serve as a midway break point, all of the enemies are different movie production people; such as a sound guy, a camera man, an executive, and eventually leading up to director Damian Leone himself. It’s an attempt to be meta, but it falls ridiculously flat.
Most of the enemies you’ll encounter are some variant of police officer, a typical clown, or gigantic firefighter dudes that block a lot and require some brute force to take down. Aside from the four playable characters, there are seven bosses, two or three normal enemy types, two giant types, and some weird wombat thing that throws bombs and wears those purple shades with the bars from the 80s.
The playable characters are Art, Vicky, the Little Pale Girl, and Adam Burke, most recognizable as professional wrestler Chris Jericho, for some reason. Zero idea why he’s a playable character, I guess they just really needed to flesh out a fourth for that four player co-op.
Speaking of that, co-op is local only, and good luck with that for a knock off version of River City Rampage. There’s also a story mode (which is really just Arcade mode with a purpose, more in just a moment), a 100 level “wave mode” where you fight a gauntlet of enemies on each floor before jumping on an elevator up to the next, a time-trial mode, a boss rush mode, and a versus mode because why shouldn’t this thing also have a fighting mode? There’s a lot to offer at first glance, but one playthrough of the game shows you what’s actually here: An hour and a half seven stage suckfest followed up by unlocking some additional modes that are even less inspired.
The music consists of some sort of a generic metal guitar riff that sounds lazier than using Suno AI to auto generate it in five seconds, and I truly hope that whomever did this was paid like $20 or did it simply as a favor, because it’s completely forgettable and bland even when disguised as “chiptune” sounding. The sound is so loud that I had to turn it down to about 25% just so it wasn’t making my ears ring in my headphones. There are a few voice lines scattered throughout, which aren’t really necessary since Art is a silent antagonist, but an attempt at something coherent would have been nice. The voice acting from other old school arcade side-scrollers like Sunset Riders absolutely puts this thing to shame. “Bury me with my… money…” is an Oscar winning performance compared to what’s uttered by the bosses in Terrifier: The ARTcade Game.
This “game” feels like it’s got all of the quality of a bad asset flip with decently drawn Terrifier sprites. Each character has a normal attack, a heavy attack, a jump kick, a jump punch, a running attack, and a special move. Beating an enemy down to low health dazes them which gives you the opportunity to run over and perform an execution which regenerates a little bit of your special meter. Every character has two kill animations and once you’ve seen them once, you won’t care once you see it the second time. Art shoots them in the face with his sawed off shotgun, or pulls out a big squeaky horn that causes the enemy’s head to pop and sometimes spatter blood and an eyeball or some teeth on the screen. Nurse Adam simply claps his fists together and blows up their head. Super inventive to give the pro wrestler some wrestling moves, guys.
I really wish I could recommend this even as a cheeky pickup for fans of the Terrifier series, but $20 is absolutely ridiculous and screams cash grab. If you buy this, you are paying for the license and literally nothing else. I’ve played so many games that are better than this that costs less than a fourth of the price. This game is so lazy it uses less than ten sound effects, and some of the pieces don’t even have the reverse side drawn properly. The Clapperella boss has a movie clapper that she attacks with, and if she stands facing the left, the clapper is mirrored, so they only even bothered drawing one side. The health pickup of Art Krispies is exactly the same way and most often loads in backwards which is ridiculously lazy for something that you could have easily gotten away with only drawing one side of. Sienna Shaw shows up in her warrior princess costume from Terrifier 2 and she’s called “Sienna Saw”, like you really couldn’t bother running a spell check guys?
Not only does it not support cloud saves, which means jumping from my PC to Steam Deck results in two different save files, but it doesn’t even have an option to actually exit the game. You have to ALT+F4 to close it out. There are so many things that are intentionally overlooked here that there’s no possible way this was released with any sort of care. This is a shame because at least whomever did the art layout/design cared enough about the series to include some of the iconic things like the Clown Cafe even though it doesn’t fit into the level it appears in.
I also noticed that if you play Arcade mode and you choose a different character when continuing, at the start of the next level, you will automatically revert to whomever you originally chose. Oh, and while playing the wave mode, I got hit by a bomb which sets you on fire and bounces you into the air, but of course because this game had like no QA, I got permanently stuck in mid air, forcing me to quit out to the menu. I honestly have no idea how this game was released in its current state.
This thing is a joke and solely exists to make a few bucks based on the extreme popularity of the movie franchise. Damien Leone probably charged them an arm and a leg for the licensing rights and I hope the amount of money they make equals the amount of effort they put into making this game. It’s clunky, slow, and painfully boring. I can’t believe it took them over a year to produce this abysmal dumpster fire. This game is so bad that we were given a copy on our Steam Curator, and I still wish I could return it.
Terrifier: The ARTcade Game was reviewed on Steam using a code provided by Selecta Play via Steam Curator. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Terrifier: The ARTcade Game is now available for Windows PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
