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With The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Gun Interactive is returning to the asymmetrical horror genre it helped popularize with 2017’s Friday The 13th: The Game. Following our recent deep dive, it’s now been revealed that more than just the previously announced trio of villains will be playable when the game launches in 2023. Today, GameSpot can exclusively reveal the first development images of two new villains coming to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
It took some time–and some eagle-eyed community members–to put all the clues together, but it turns out Gun has been teasing this reveal for a while. It’s been building an elaborate alternate reality game (ARG) and using out-of-game materials like Instagram accounts for fictional characters, fake newsreels on YouTube, and a free itch.io game made in Unreal Engine 5 that takes a decidedly dark turn.
At the end of this cryptic sequence of events comes its reveal: The developers are bringing two new family members into the game’s story, increasing its full roster of villains to five. This includes the three original baddies from the 1974 movie–Leatherface, the Hitchhiker, and the Cook–as well as the two newly-created family members, Johnny and Sissy, who will make their debut when the game arrives next year. Below you can find the first-ever public development images of these two new characters.
The pair were created by Gun in collaboration with Kim Henkel, the movie’s original screenwriter and rightsholder. Their inclusion in the game means each of the two “teams” in any given round will include a full roster of five characters to choose from, with the game ultimately played in a 4v3 setup where victims outnumber the killers just slightly–the chainsaw is the great equalizer, anyway.
Below we’ll walk you through how to experience the ARG for yourself in full detail. If you consider this a spoiler and wish to experience it without a helping hand, we’ll just offer one nudge as a starting point: Check out this Instagram account for Maria Flores, a character within the game’s lore. For the full guide on how to piece it all together, keep reading.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre ARG
To solve the ARG, here’s what the community has had to do–trace these steps to see it all for yourself, using it as a guide if you get stuck looking for the next clue. If you can solve the mystery yourself, that may be most fulfilling, but here’s everything in case you need it.
Visit this Instagram account that pays tribute to Maria Flores
Maria is the long-missing sister of Ana, the game’s de facto “final girl.” The account exists as a memorial to Maria. According to the lore, she went missing in 1973 on a road trip through Texas during which time she was sending letters and photos home to her family. The account exists to remember a long-lost loved one.
Scan the newspaper image for clues
Like her photos, Maria’s letters were shared on Instagram by family decades after she sent them. While the writings began innocently enough, they eventually spoke of a man that Maria believed was following her. She also reported some car trouble. Her last letter mentioned that she would be hitchhiking on Route 172, the same road on which the family of killers lived.
The Instagram user later shared an image of the newspaper that described her disappearance. After some time, the user uploaded a higher-resolution image of the paper for internet sleuths to ogle over. This gave them their next lead: the newspaper’s five-digit date of printing, which doubles as a zip code: 42773.
Look up the zip code on Google Maps
Any ARG worth its time is likely to get weird, and here’s where this one really does. Because April 27, 1973 was not a Sunday, Gun deliberately made the fake newspaper the “Sunday Edition” so as to tip off fans that the date was significant. That’s because not only is the date really meant as a zip code, but in small font next to the printed date are exact coordinates.
Entering either the zip code or, better yet, the exact coordinates (20.173189, -99.341959) into Google Maps gives you Hidalgo, Mexico. Going to the precise coordinates within Hidalgo gives you Ricardo Flores School, which is a real place that Gun meant to use as a sign that players were in the correct spot.
Gun Interactive decided to play off of the real-world Google Street View imagery here, when it found a wall that reads “ESC.TV 417” next to a different wall that features Google and YouTube logos on it. If you look up the location’s precise coordinates on YouTube, you’ll find this bizarre video published by an account called ESC.TV 417 which, for ARG players, will certainly look like the next thread to pull.
Visit the URL hinted at in the video
The video acts like an aged recording of a retro news broadcast sign off, which isn’t really around much more in our modern 24/7 news cycle. The video seems to touch on a missing woman (presumably Maria) before quickly going off the air. The end credits to the news show glitch for a moment, revealing a URL: Petalsgame.com.
Play the free standalone game on itch.io
Petals is a first-person photography game made in Unreal Engine 5 and available as a free download on itch.io, normally a platform for indie and solo devs to release oddball projects, micro-games, and more. In this case, Gun, together with collaborators at The Odd Gentlemen, have snuck a fully playable teaser game into the world that reveals not just the fate of Maria Flores, but also the introduction of two new villains to the iconic family, Johnny and Sissy.
We’ll let you play it for yourself from here, because even if you followed the guide this far, you really should see this part firsthand. If you still would prefer to skip that part, or perhaps can’t play PC games, here’s a full-length demo of the experience.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, now with two new sinister characters to run from–or chase victims as–launches in 2023 on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox, including day one on Xbox Game Pass.
