I didn’t mean to take the boat all by myself and leave my friends for dead. I really didn’t. I thought I was just getting in the boat, and then starting it up. I thought we would all leave together. Oh, no. No, no, no. I was signing death warrants, damning them to the Klownpocalypse. Oops. But as I sped away on my little outboard, I couldn’t help but laugh. They couldn’t either. And moments like that, where you’ve accidentally just left your teammates to die and everyone is laughing about it while trying to escape a group of demented space Klowns, are how you know you’re having a good time. They made it out anyway. Well, most of them.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is the latest in the asymmetrical horror multiplayer survival genre that you should be intimately familiar with if you’ve ever played Dead by Daylight and its myriad imitators. Killer Klowns differentiates itself from the competition in a couple ways, though. First, there are just more players: three Killer Klowns and seven Humans, which makes for more exciting (and frequent) skirmishes than a one-on-four game. The humans can also fight back: crowbars, baseball bats, two-by-fours, knives, revolvers, and my personal favorite, shotguns are scattered around the map and yours for the taking, though you’ll have to work around ammo and item durability.

And this isn’t just a “slow the Klowns down and run away” kind of proposition. You can send these demonic space Klowns to the great circus tent in the sky – at least for a little while. Once you knock a Klown down, you can either stab ‘em in the nose with a sharp object or pop it like a balloon with a gun to knock them right out of their oversized shoes and back to the “waiting to respawn” screen.

I’ve seen fights turn on a dime because someone showed up at the right moment, something broke, or someone made a good play. The Klowns, however, aren’t defenseless. They’re armed with Cotton Candy Rayguns that can turn you into the biggest cotton candy cocoon you’ve ever seen, boxing gloves, balloon dogs, a rubber mallet, and so on. The Klowns tend to dominate in up-close-and-personal combat unless the humans roll up with a shotgun or overpower them with sheer numbers, but humans are faster – though sprinting is noisy, and risks telling the Klowns where you are. It makes for some tense, exciting, and strategic combat encounters, especially when you’re playing a human, you knock a Klown down, and your knife breaks before you can pull off the execution and you’re running for your life. Alternatively, you can be beating down a human as a Klown and then have his buddy show up with a shotgun and punch your ticket for a one-way trip on the Dead Klown Express, population: you. It’s really good stuff, and I’ve seen fights turn on a dime because someone showed up at the right moment, something broke, or someone made a good play.

Things escalate further as the match goes on and the Klowns gain the abilities like Jump, which allows them to instantaneously jump across the map, and Hypnotic Lure, which, well… lures humans to you. When you absolutely, positively need a human to eat a Mortal Kombat-style Klowntality, which can range from launching them into space with your mallet to serving up a heaping helping of pies to their face and kills them instantly, no cotton candy cocoon required, accept no substitutes. And, in a particularly nice touch, you can change them on the fly mid-match.

In general, the Klowns want to cotton candy the humans up, hang them on Klown hooks as, one presumes, a dark offering to some Particularly Nasty Space Klown God™ to speed the arrival of the Klownpcalypse. Humans want to avoid that and escape before the game clock hits zero and the Klownpocalypse, long foretold, finally happens. But escaping isn’t easy. Not only will you need to find the exits on a map, you’ll need to find the stuff you need to open them up or make them work.

Remember that boat I was telling you about earlier? To use it, you’ll need to find gas and a spark plug. I also found another barricaded exit over a rickety bridge. To get out, you need a strong melee weapon to bust open the barricade and then a key to unlock a gate. What you need for an exit isn’t always immediately obvious when you’re looking at it – I was running from a Klown and only had the key, so that ended about as well as you’d expect – but it also never changes for that particular exit. If you know how to do the boat, you know how to do the boat. After a few matches, you’ll know how everything works.

There are little mini-games you can play while you’re down that reward other surviving players with items to help them out. But even if you’re like me and you get cotton candied, hooked, and more or less packed up, that doesn’t mean you’re out. Your teammates can always rescue you, but if you do buy it, there are little mini-games you can play that reward other players (or you, more on that in a second) with items to help them out. Whether you’re playing Klown-themed whack-a-mole, shooting baskets, popping balloons, or whatever else, there’s always something to do, and you’re always helping out your team. And then there’s the Resurrection Machine, a one-use revive that calls every dead human back from the afterlife for a last-ditch shot at glory. And, of course, near the end of the game, new exits, like an ice cream truck that literally crashes through the level, come into play. Both of these things came into play during my sessions, so it truly isn’t over until it’s over. Last-minute comebacks are a thing for both teams.

Clowns are supposed to be funny, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space nails the humor that comes with adapting such an absurd cult classic while also carving out a unique space for itself in the asymmetrical multiplayer genre. I’ve played Killer Klowns twice now – at PAX East, and for this preview event – and I have never not had a blast with it. It’s the kind of game I can see myself squadding up for, and it has real potential to stand out in a crowded market. During our multiplayer session, the fine folks at Illfonic told me they were confident they’ve made the best Klowns from space game in human history, and however Killer Klowns shakes out, it’s a hard claim to dispute. As for me, I can’t wait to get some friends together and survive the Klownpocalypse. Next time, I won’t leave them on the pier, watching me sail into the sunset. Probably.