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My initial impression on the reading the game was: This writer really knows the genre. It's a lot wider that folks would initially think, and if you've been a fan of slasher flicks over the years, you've seen the genre change to include the camp of Friday the 13th movies, the supernatural horror of Freddy Krueger, and the recent spate of "torture porn" films like Hostel. Slasher Flick lists the tropes of many of these movies, pulling into focus much of what we love about them, but showcasing how varied they really are. You can't include all of the different conventions from slasher flicks in a single game of Slasher Flick, and the book helps the reader realize that, even with a niche of the horror movie genre, there's a lot to do.
One criticism before we get to the game itself: The art. Art appreciation is subjective, of course, but the art in Slasher Flick looks cheap, in my opinion. Cartoonish, not especially well composed, I found myself wishing for mocked-up movie posters with a bit more of a photographic quality. Now, I'm fully aware that this would probably put the price up, but I did find the effect of the included art to be a little off-putting, especially since the text takes the the subject matter seriously.
Moving on to the game itself: Characters are defined by four stats (Brains, Brawn, Finesse and Spirit). They're rated Poor, Normal or Good, meaning that the player rolls d10s, d8s or d6s, respectively. Matches determine success, so a lower die-type is good, as it increases the chance of rolling matching numbers. Characters also have qualities, which can subtract or add a die from relevant rolls (a positive Brawn Quality might be "Never Skipped Gym Class" or "Street Fighter", for instance). Primary characters can also get special abilities. One of my favorites: Once per session, a (female) character can, upon seeing something horrible, let out a bloodcurdling scream and gain four genre points (see below).
Players each control one primary character (the ones getting top billing, as it were), and the group creates a number of secondary characters determined by the Director (the GM, of course). Secondary characters have the same traits as primaries, but they don't have as many qualities and they don't get special abilities. They're also created by committee; during the character creation process the secondary sheets are passed left after every stage. This was a lot of fun for my group; the secondary characters took on life and detail that they probably wouldn't have otherwise, and that made it more meaningful later when they all died.
Yep, these characters are probably toast. Secondary characters are regarded as resources - when they die, the players controlling them at the time get genre points. You can also get genre points by acting in-genre; going off alone, spouting horror movie dialog, or turning your back on the "obviously dead" killer. But players get these points, not characters, so if a secondary character dies under a player's control, that player gets 2 genre points which he'll probably use later to save his primary character's ass.
Genre points are used to activate special abilities, but also to do things like get your flashlight working after it conks out, find a helpful item during a kill scene, or pull another character into a kill scene. They're easy to accumulate if you play the game appropriately; that is, remember you're in a slasher flick and you should be acting like it.
And then there's the killer. The killer in Slasher Flick doesn't really have traits; it has some components. If the killer is Freddy Krueger-ugly, it might have Fearful Visage (meaning characters get a penalty on freak-out checks. Be aware, when someone fails that check, someone at the table will start singing "Freak Out"). If the killer cleans up his kill-scenes quickly, he's Tidy, and characters take a penalty on Spirit checks to convince people that there was a body here a minute ago.
The Director doesn't roll dice on behalf of the killer. Instead, when one or more characters enter a "kill scene," the player describes what the character is doing in response to the killer's attacks or actions, and then makes a roll based on that action. That roll might gain or lose the character survival points (primary characters start a kill scene with one, while secondaries start at zero). If the character's total survival points rises to 8 during the scene, the scene ends and he survives. If the total drops below 0, the scene ends unfavorably for that character (you can probably guess what that means).
The killer is pretty much unstoppable until a certain number of characters have died (there's a formula, but it cooks down to "all but two," basically). A killer with a special weakness might die sooner, and obviously you shouldn't go dragging out the flick trying to kill one last character. My experience was that characters aren't as easy to kill as you'd think; one character survived four kill scenes and lived through the movie. As the Director, my feeling is that you should think ahead of time about how this killer might go out, and moreover, how the movie ends. There's discussion about running the game in the book, obviously, and it does a great job of considering different approaches to Slasher Flick.
I ran this game last night, and if you've got some patience you can read the write-up here (it's long). I had a group of people who knew their slasher flick tropes well (even if not all of them were exactly fans), and were, for the most part, willing to die in service to the movie. And that's what's really necessary to enjoy this game, I think. It's not about making sure your character survives, it's about making sure the right character survives. Who that is depends on the movie you're making.
Final thoughts: This is a very well-composed genre emulation game. It's quick to make characters, it encourages everyone working together to tell a story movie-style and it does exactly what it sets out to do. While you're going to need to think on your feet to make some of the rolls make sense (people can die or win a kill scene with a single roll very easily, and sometimes that means some clever narrative is in order), that, to me, is part of the fun. If you enjoy a good dead teenager flick, pick this game up, make some characters, and get filming.
