A confession: I’m one of those people who just doesn’t get The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Don’t get me wrong—I can enjoy Tim Curry being sexually confusing in his prime as much as any other red-blooded human, but as a musical it feels like an awful lot of running around for the sake of one decent song.
But perhaps I’ll finally be able to wrap my head around it now that it’s being translated to videogame form, the one medium I know anything about. That’s right, we’re getting a Rocky Horror game—and very soon too, with the trailer promising an October 2024 release. Just in time for Halloween!
It’s brought to us by the folks at FreakZone Games—you might know them from the AVGN games, or for making a game based on Manos: The Hand of Fate (which makes licensing Rocky Horror seem very mainstream by comparison). Their vibe is retro 2D platformers, with plenty of pixelart and chiptunes, and this certainly looks to fit that mould. Footage shows lots of steps to the right, though it is oddly lacking in jumps to the left.
I don’t know if 2D platforming is necessarily the best way to adapt this particular story, but then I also don’t know if you could entirely call what Rocky Horror has a “story”. It’s probably in-keeping for this game to be much more about vibes than cinematic accuracy, and it does seem to have a very charming interpretation of the cast as sprites to go with its chirpy 8-bit take on the soundtrack.
It doesn’t have a Steam page yet, but the trailer promises a release on there (along with PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch versions), so watch this space. And, er, insert your own clever Rocky Horror reference to close this out—I already exhausted my knowledge with that rubbish “jump to the left” gag.
