According to early projections, Stephen King’s It is set to scare up a big response at the box office. The novel has been frightening King’s readers for over three decades, and the film appears to recapture terror of that story with Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd’s undeniably creepy performance as Pennywise the clown. But what if It had previously been adapted as a video game? Now we have an idea of how that might have played out.

If you visit the film’s official site and click on this link, it will take you to a old school video game very loosely based upon It. And we mean loosely! The game places players in control of the paper boat that belonged to poor Georgie Denbrough in the opening moments of the story. From there, gamers can guide the boat through the sewers of Derry, Maine while attempting to pop the many red balloons and avoiding all objects, including Pennywise himself.

It’s bizarre, to say the least. Unlike the infamous Friday the 13th game for the NES, this It game doesn’t even pretend to have much to do with the movie. Although SkarsgÃ¥rd’s creepy laugh is a nice touch and the music is genuinely unsettling. But any context for this game will have to be supplied by the gamers themselves.

If we had to fill in the gaps, we’d say that the boat represents Georgie’s soul as he attempts to escape It following his physical death. In this way, Pennywise would have kept his promise to Georgie: “We all float down here. You’ll float too.”

It will be unleashed in movie theaters on Friday, September 8.

What did you think about the new game inspired by Stephen King’s It? Take out some balloons in the comment section below!

Images: Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line