As far as multiplayer with a bunch of randoms goes, social deduction games are probably my favourite. The nature of these things encourages players to play by the rules and behave (at least to an extent), so you tend to run into fewer experience-breaking arseholes. Or at least, that’s been my experience to date. With all of that in context, Square Enix’s new Killer Inn looks pretty good to me.
In Killer Inn, teams are split in two. The majority of players are “lambs”, and then a few are “wolves.” Lambs don’t know who the wolves are. The wolves need to manufacture opportunities to murder the lambs in secret, and then when a lamb has been murdered, there’s a clue left that the other lambs can use to try and narrow down who the wolves are.
Meanwhile, you need to complete quests in the inn, collect weapons to either defend yourself or help with the murdering, and ultimately try to escape (if you’re a lamb). On top of that each character has their own abilities and gets more powerful as they level up in a match.
Based on all of this it does sound like each match in Killer Inn will be a gaming session in its own right. It remains to be seen how well balanced it is, and what kind of long-term value players will take out of it… but it is intriguing and potentially a very entertaining, taut, live-action Cluedo-like. I’m all for that.
You’ll need to click through to YouTube to watch the trailer, above, because it is age gated (and for a fairly good reason). It goes without saying that I wouldn’t expect this to have a single player mode. There’s a closed beta coming “soon” to PC, but no other details about release date and platforms at this point.
