You’re a spy. I’m a spy. Everyone is a spy. We all have the same goal, to pull off the heist of the century. However, only one of us can go home with the prize. Deceive Inc is a game of cat and mouse that could well take over as a multiplayer favourite, in a similar vein to how Among Us blew up in 2019 - if you have enough friends to hop on a Discord call that is.
Watch the trailer for Deceive Inc below:
There’s a wide array of spies you can choose from, all with different abilities. The spy I played as when demoing at Gamescom could throw a big inflatable ball to either block a path or make a quick getaway. Others can steal items, disguise themselves as a random prop or deploy a portable turret.
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The stealth aspect of the game works surprisingly well, mainly because everyone is disguised as an NPC. You can morph into anyone on the map too, which is useful if you think someone is on your tail or to gain access to different areas. If you want to blend in perfectly while picking up intel in the Lab then you better look like a scientist. It reminds me a little of the massively underrated multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed 2, where you can give yourself away as easily as you can be incognito.
Rounds tend to last between ten and twenty minutes as players make their way through increasing levels of security, while the action really steps up the closer you are to extraction.
Basically, you need to steal a golden briefcase but how you do that is entirely up to you. The developers from Sweet Bandits Studios told me that they’d seen great success in simply waiting for others to do the hard work, before swooping in at the last second to claim victory. If you’re killed by another player or an NPC, that’s it, game over. Therefore, you can’t just disguise yourself as a toilet and skip around shooting everything and everyone you see. That does sound pretty fun though, so next time I play Deceive Inc I know what I’m going to do.
As a fan of Arkane’s Deathloop, the 70s music and aesthetic mixed in with a modern set of gadgets made me feel at home straight away. Think multiplayer 1v1s with Colt and Julianna in Deathloop but with ten other maniacs running around, gathering intel and taking each other out. The game can be played as seriously as you want to, however I imagine the more comical and irreverent moments while playing with your friends is where Deceive Inc will shine.
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Deceive Inc is coming to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox early 2023.
Featured Image Credit: Tripwire InteractiveTopics: Indie Games, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X