Featuring the Slaughter Family and their Victims, the trailer showcases the familiar frights and sights of the original film along with a host of grisly surprises.

Gun Interactive shared more details from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, including the main theme music for the game, titled "The Massacre."

Written by BAFTA-nominated composer Ross Tregenza and featuring a performance from Gun CEO, Game Design, Audio & Art Director Wes Keltner on his Apprehension Engine, the piece is an unsettling sneak peek into the soundscape of the game, while still evoking the original score of the classic 1974 film.

Tregenza said that the main theme was "made of pig screams, chainsaws, [and] scraped metal," among other equipment like the Soma Lyra drone machine, assuring fans that "there's a lot more to come." Keltner's performance utilized the Apprehension Engine, the custom-made musical instrument played by the likes of Mark Korven and Trent Reznor, and which was once described by Brian Eno as "the most terrifying musical instrument of all time."

Victims Unveiled, Abilities & Attributes Explained

In addition to the premiere of "The Massacre," Gun also kicked off the month by revealing a series of 70's-style character trading cards that detail the biographical info and in-game attributes of each of the game's five main Victims. From good ol' Texan boy and ex-high school wrestler Leland McKinney, to Ana Flores, protagonist and sister to the missing Maria, these throwback cards provide a foundation for the game's story while also adding a visual flourish that evokes the era of baseball cards on bicycle spokes. 

When Maria Flores went missing, and local law enforcement seemed to stall out in their search, her younger sister Ana teamed up with some of Maria’s friends from college to pick up the trail. It’s time for you to meet our cast of Victims.

By now you’ve probably read up on the story of Maria Flores, the college student who disappeared while road tripping through the area surrounding Austin, photographing the Spring wildflowers. Her younger sister Ana, joined by some of Maria’s friends from college, embark on a search mission to find Maria. Maria is the catalyst, the search party is the cast. But creating such a cast of characters is not simply giving them a name and look. Not if you expect your players to attach to them in meaningful ways.

“When we sat down to think about the Victims in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, we had two things we kept circling back to - will people enjoy playing these characters as people, and do these characters make sense as a group that would be friends? The first question is really important; you've got to give them enough personality for players to latch on to while leaving room for them to identify with and inhabit these individuals. It means we dove as deep into thinking about them as we did the new Family members. The second answer is helped along by the first. We wanted a diverse group of friends that would - surface level - strongly correlate to differing playstyles. Thinking about those relationships (Who is better friends with who? Why are these two friends?) helped us to create a group that feels natural together, even if they're very different from one another.” said Gun Interactive Executive Producer Ismael Vicens.

Once you start building this diverse group of personalities, complete with their own backstories and identities, those aspects of their persona develop into how they feel in game, how they play, and their strengths and weaknesses.

Let’s talk a little bit about these characters and who they really are.

• Julie: Julie is a Southern California native and fits every bit of what that description might bring to mind. Sand, surf, and sport lifestyle. But whether or not her life to this point has prepared her for the stress and strain of the experience that requires an entirely different type of toughness remains to be seen. Will her physical abilities be enough to carry her through an absolute nightmare unlike any other?
• Leland: While Leland might have wrestled in high school, college life is a long way from high school and his glory days of wrestling. Still, he is the toughest of the group, but what he has in strength he lacks elsewhere. A native Texan and bit of a tough guy, but still no match one on one against the likes of the Slaughter Family and therefore his capabilities benefit from teamwork with his peers.
• Connie: Connie comes from a life on the farm, where she never shied away from the work that went along with it. While not quite what you’d imagine a tomboy to be, Connie relishes in being the type of person that will surprise you with her skills. She’s crafty, intelligent, and ingenuitive. A natural tinkerer, her skills are more surgical than strong arm.
• Sonny: Sonny might have a slightly smaller frame, but he more than makes up for that with his intellect. The best student of the bunch is not only book smart, he’s quick on his feet and quick with his decisions. Perceptive and intuitive, exceptionally situationally aware, Sonny will need to rely on his intelligence if he’s to survive, and his friends would be equally wise to reap the benefits of his abilities.
• Ana: And then there’s Ana. Ana is fiercely motivated and a natural leader. After losing her father, she and Maria help to take care of their mother, while trying to forge their own paths as well. Now with Maria missing, Ana is done sitting idly by while law enforcement stumbles along. Determination and sheer willpower are her strongest suits, and she’ll need every ounce of her resilience to endure.

“When you take care to build out the personalities of this group of diverse but connected people, all of whom are emotionally invested in the search for Maria and bringing their own unique experiences and strengths to the group, their in-game abilities start to form organically. You’ve put so much into who they are that you start to visualize how they are: How will they react? What would they do in this situation they find themselves in? From there, it really becomes a matter of design and iteration to take those attributes and traits from their backstories and into their ultimate role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” commented Gun Interactive Creative Director Ronnie Hobbs

While these stories are just scratching the surface, we hope you are starting to see where these personalities intersect and separate, where they can work as a force multiplier or balance equalizer. Knowing that we have five capable characters at your disposal for a four person team means syncing up with the other players around you to either double their efforts or balance their shortcomings. Cooperation is the strongest tool at their disposal, but single handedly they all are capable of putting up one hell of a fight, in their own unique and distinctive ways. 

You’ve met the Victims cast, heard their back stories, and now you’ve seen the trading cards that reflect their unique Abilities and Attributes. But what exactly is an Ability versus an Attribute? And further, how do they work in game?

We know there’s bound to be some questions, and probably will continue to be up until you’re there for yourself, sneaking out of the basement of the old Texas farmhouse. With this Hub article we’re hoping to shed some light on the stats shared and how they operate and hopefully answer at least a few of those nagging questions for the community.

Character stats are broken out into five main Attribute categories: Toughness, Endurance, Strength, Proficiency, and Stealth and while each Victim has a base value for each Attribute, these values can be tweaked by way of the metagame and that Victim’s unique Skill Tree. Stashed among the various perks within the Skill Tree unlocks are Attribute Unlock Points. Snagging one of those will award a point that can be used to raise the value of any Attribute the player chooses. This is just one of the options players can use to build their Victim loadouts in unique ways. Of course, the base values play an important role in this, as pumping up a low base value will cost more Attribute Unlock Points than leaning into a specific Victim’s strong suits. More on the full metagame later. For now, let’s cover what these Attributes really are.

• Toughness: Toughness is NOT to be confused with Strength. True Toughness is fortitude, built from character, and in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre it’s not simply a health pool. While Toughness does help you sustain more damage before becoming incapacitated, it also shortens your recovery time, giving you a higher all around survivability.
• Endurance: Similar to Toughness, Endurance encapsulates more than just the stamina pool. Endurance in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will help with the overall stamina while also speeding up your stamina regeneration rate, getting you back to full speed faster.
• Strength: Strength determines how effective a Victim is at confronting Family members. Strength can alter the stun effect duration for actions such as sneak attacks, grappling in close encounters, and bursting out of hiding spots. Strength also assists Victims in certain interactions like escaping restraints, opening crawl spaces, and turning off the generator.
• Proficiency: Proficiency is the gauge we measure a Victim’s ability to accomplish skilled tasks and interactions, such as lock picking. While higher Proficiency Victims can pick locks more easily, lower Proficiency Victims still can pick locks, they just might struggle a bit more with the interaction.
• Stealth: Stealth is everywhere in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and as such, the Stealth Attribute is a bit more specific than the general Stealth that all Victims are capable of. This Attribute influences the Victim’s ability to perform actions silently, generating less noise while accomplishing tasks. This does not, however, affect the general Stealth used in game, such as hiding from Family members and staying in the shadows.

While all of our Victims have their strengths and weaknesses, players have access to the full metagame, which can be extremely powerful in terms of customizing your loadouts to feel unique and play the way you would like to. While metagame will never make a Connie into a Leland, players can tinker with builds to address areas of particular Victims they feel they need to boost.

Speaking of unique elements and our cast of Victims, let’s talk a little bit about Abilities.

• Connie: Focused Ability - First up we have Connie’s Focused Ability, an Ability that allows her to pick a lock much faster at the cost of stamina and her Family proximity warnings, without consuming the unlock tool.
• Sonny: Heightened Sense - Sonny, our intellectual, has the Heightened Sense Ability. Triggering this will give Sonny a situational awareness buff, allowing him to detect noise made by anyone nearby, pinpointing their location and tracking their movements.
• Julie: Ultimate Escape - Ultimate Escape sure sounds like a hell of an Ability, and Julie, the sporting type, makes great use of it. When activated, Julie cannot be tracked by the Family while also getting significantly reduced stamina drain while sprinting for a short time.
• Leland: Life Saver - Leland can throw his weight around, literally. Use the Life Saver Ability to bump charge a Family member, stunning them. Leland can use this Ability in a variety of ways to interrupt an otherwise fatal clash with Family for himself or his friends.
• Ana: Pain is Nothing - Last but not least we have Ana, the fearless leader. Her appropriately named Ability, Pain is Nothing, significantly reduces the damage she’ll take from attacks and falls, like jumping out windows. Her additional buff is a temporary immunity to the effects of any poison.

All of these Abilities can be further tweaked and tuned in a breakout section of the metagame skill trees. Players can open up the Ability panel from within the main skill tree and add earned points to either speed up the cooldown timings, buff the Ability effects, or change key parameters of the Ability and how it functions.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2023.