Terrifier: The Artcade Game – Art the Clown Deserves Better is the kind of licensed brawler that sounds fun over a pint, then falls apart the second you actually pick up the controller. It has a killer horror icon, stylish pixel art, and a clear love for modern beat ’em ups, yet somehow manages to feel like a relic from the bad old days of lazy tie-ins.
On paper, the setup is exactly what a Terrifier game should be: a film crew tries to turn Art and his buddies into movie mascots, and the psychopaths respond in the most reasonable way they know – by painting the set red. The opening cutscene leans into that meta-horror angle nicely, but once it is over, the story basically clocks out and never comes back, leaving you to punch your way through sets with almost no personality or payoff.
Arcade brawlers do not need Oscar-level scripts, but they do need flavour. A few extra scenes, some banter, anything to remind you this is Terrifier and not a random Halloween clearance-bin special would have gone a long way. Instead, the narrative presence is so thin that the license feels like a sticker slapped onto a generic template.
Two Hours Of Punching Air
The campaign lasts around two hours, spread across a handful of stages that mostly blur together as different bits of the movie set. You can choose between Art, Little Pale Girl, Emily Crane, and Burke the Orderly, each with slightly different stats, and up to three friends can join you in co-op – as long as they are on your couch, because this is a 2025 game that somehow ships with local multiplayer only
Every character boils down to the same basic move list: light attack, heavy attack, jump strike, dodge, one special, grabs, and the occasional weapon pickup. That level of simplicity could work if the combat felt crunchy and responsive, but instead it is stiff, weightless, and weirdly unsatisfying, like punching mannequins in a haunted Primark
Combat That Never Wakes Up
The big sin here is that nothing in the combat has impact. Movement feels sluggish, hit detection is spotty, and grabs – which you really need for some of the chunkier enemies – seem to work only when the game feels generous. There is no real combo flow, no satisfying air juggling or crowd control; you hit an enemy, they flop down, you stand around while they get back up, and then repeat until everyone involved is bored.
Sound design makes things worse. Punches barely land with a thud, gunshots cut off awkwardly, and the looping metal track just kind of exists in the background without reacting to anything you do. Bosses, meanwhile, are forgettable members of the fictional film crew with a couple of spammed attacks, turning what should be big, memorable horror showdowns into dull HP sponges.
Gore, Filters, And Wasted Style
The tragic part is that the game actually looks decent at first glance. The pixel art gives Art the Clown and the cast a chunky, stylish look, and environments have some nice detail that suits the horror-movie-set theme. But the screen is constantly buried under eyeballs, teeth, blood, and CRT/VCR filters, which stops feeling edgy after a few seconds and just becomes visual noise.
You can turn off the filters for a cleaner image, but no option exists to tone down the gore overlay, so the whole thing ends up feeling like a good-looking sprite sheet drowning in its own gimmicks. Execution moves try to bring in that Terrifier brutality, yet each character only gets a couple of them, and they feel more like small animations for topping up your special meter than signature moments that define Art’s violence.
Extra Modes, Same Old Problems
Time Attack, Boss Rush, and Survival modes are included to pad out the package, but they all lean on the same limp combat that already wore out its welcome in the main campaign. When the core act of throwing a punch isn’t fun, the promise of replaying bosses or waves of enemies just sounds like homework with extra steps.
Extra Modes, Same Old Problems
Time Attack, Boss Rush, and Survival modes are included to pad out the package, but they all lean on the same limp combat that already wore out its welcome in the main campaign. When the core act of throwing a punch isn’t fun, the promise of replaying bosses or waves of enemies just sounds like homework with extra steps.
Little frustrations chip away at the experience as well, like hammering a button every time you are knocked down, which feels like a design leftover from a much older, harsher era of brawlers. Combined with spongy enemies, it turns what should be quick, cathartic scraps into drawn-out chores.
Verdict: Art Deserves Better
Terrifier: The Artcade Game lands squarely in that awkward middle ground where it is not offensively bad, just painfully forgettable. Strip away the nicely drawn pixel version of Art the Clown and his pals, and you are left with a barebones brawler that does almost nothing interesting with its licence or its combat.
In a time when beat ’em ups like Streets of Rage 4 and Shredder’s Revenge have shown how to bring the genre roaring back, Terrifier shuffles onto the stage, throws a few weak punches, and quietly exits. Art the Clown deserves a game that embraces his wild, nasty energy; instead, he is stuck starring in a side-scroller that will vanish from your memory faster than the credits roll.
