A Murderer Is Among Us in Square Enix's Killer Inn
Square Enix
The game is very reminiscent of the breakout pandemic hit Among Us, with players performing mundane tasks as they try to avoid getting murdered. Two teams consisting of 18 Lambs (prey) and six Wolves (predators) will be set loose on the grounds of a large and labyrinthian mansion.
The Wolves know the allegiance of everyone and their goal is to eliminate every Lamb before the timer runs out. Lambs are left clueless of who is friend or foe and must be cautious when encountering another player. The Lambs win by either eliminating all six Wolves or by escaping the island during the endgame phase (more on that later).
But players won't be idly waiting to hunt or be hunted. The game's core loop involves all players receiving short quests from the in-game NPCs. These NPCs are usually merchants who also sell useful items such as health recovery, crowbars (to access certain rooms/boxes), weapons/armor, etc.
The quests are pretty mundane and often require you to follow a glowing trail (like a waypoint in a driving game) until you come across a key. These keys can then be traded into various glowing chests around the map to unlock random items. Chests can either be random or specific to a certain type, such as assassin (traps), armor, weapon, etc.
Square Enix
A lot of these quests feel like busywork to power up your character so you have more of a fighting chance against attackers. At the same time, Wolves are also doing the same quests to get better weapons and traps to use against other players.
It's still early for Killer Inn but I didn't find any of these quests to be particularly engaging. Apart from the odd match-these-shapes or a shooting mini game, the quests are extremely low stakes and uninteresting. This might also be because we played on the one map for the entire preview so I got pretty used to the same scenarios and obstacles. The game is early so hopefully Square Enix has more maps and challenges to come.
Square Enix
Killer Inn gets a lot better when you encounter another player. It features proximity voice chat so you're able to talk to your friend/foe when close to one another to try to find out their intentions. This is a great feature because it allows you to hold secret conversations away from others. Keep in mind, I was in a preview event where everyone was trying to have a good time, so people may have been engaging in better faith than your average online match. Voice chat with random public people on the internet can be a crapshoot so your mileage may vary.
When a Wolf kills a Lamb, everyone gets a notification on their screen and a waypoint to locate the corpse. A corpse always leaves two clues to the killer's identity. In my preview it was often a piece of colored fabric or hair that corresponded to a few players each. Collecting enough of these will help you narrow down who might be a Wolf. If the Wolf is fast enough to mess with the corpse after a kill, they can remove one of the clues, letting the Lambs only find a single one. There are also single-use items in the game that can help each side hide or find more when searching a body.
Square Enix
To make things more interesting, the Lambs can't simply start killing random players, hoping they get lucky and eliminate a Wolf. If a Lamb kills another Lamb, the mistaken killer will also be eliminated from the game. This means you really need to collect clues and watch how players are reacting before taking your, sometimes literal, shot.
When the game timer nears the end, the game switches into its end state where the Lambs must head to a huge ship to board and hopefully escape. There are six anchors locking the ship in place and they must slowly lift each one before winning. It's a slow process that really makes you sweat because it leaves you in quite a vulnerable position. This is the Wolves' last chance to win and luckily it puts a lot of the Lambs in one smaller area. However, it also means a lot of eyes will be watching.
In my previews this is where the largest gun fights broke out because each team was making a last-ditch effort to win. In fact, most of the murders I came across were pretty standard stabbings or shootings. I'm sure in future games, when the players have more experience, I'll see a lot more stealth attacks and traps being laid for more intricate eliminations. There's a lot to learn from Killer Inn and it will definitely take a few rounds before you even begin to get a grasp of when to strike and when to blend in.
Square Enix
I found playing as a Lamb to be a lot easier. Having a larger team of players working together to discover the enemy allowed the pressure to be shared. As a Wolf, you're juggling a lot and trying to play both sides. In fact, during the three games I played, the Lambs won every time. I'm curious if this will remain as the game matures or will being a Wolf just require more experience with the game to succeed.
Much like the board game Werewolf, classic card game Mafia, or Among Us, Killer Inn is best played with a group of people who are all in character and really leaning into the deceptive nature of the game. You have the option of turning voice chat off but you'd be missing out on the most interesting part of the game: the lying.
Square Enix
While the social guessing game is Killer Inn's greatest strength, its humdrum quests are its biggest weakness, and I came away from it a little skeptical of its long term replayability. I enjoyed my time but am unsure if I could see myself coming back for more of those boring quests. I would love to see more interesting challenges that force players into unique scenarios where staying hidden or breaking character means life or death.
Killer Inn's closed beta goes live on Friday, July 25, on PC and currently has no final release date.
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2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Icelandic Developer Aska Studios Is Ready to Talk About Their Debut Title, Gang of Frogs
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You have people on your team all across the globe, despite being headquartered in Iceland. What does Aska Studios gain by branching out in that way? We get a lot from the global nature of the team, not only do we get to work with talent that would be difficult to find if we were only looking within Iceland, but we also get different perspectives from people that come from very different backgrounds to us, and that, ultimately, creates a much better end result when it comes to the game. This also helps us better understand regional nuances, whether that is understanding how to build a good game for the North American market or the Asian market and this aligns well with our ambitions with the game, ultimately we just want to make something worthy of people's time and want to see as many people as possible find their inner frog and enjoy conquering hordes of space crabs. What kind of experience does the Aska Studios and team have, and how have you been able to harness that talent for this game? Halldór Heidberg: The team around the game has a lot of experience. We often say that we are first-time founders backed by industry veterans, and I think the resumes of our team back that statement up fully. We have members of the team who have previously worked at Activision/Blizzard, Riot Games, CCP Games, Raven Software, Mountaintop, Warhorse, and more. This means that everything that makes it into the game, from gunplay to the UI/UX design, is backed by years of real experience with what works and what doesn't. If you combine this level of talent with a high-trust company structure and a culture that emphasizes regular feedback and open communication, it is amazing to see what can be accomplished without a specific need to 'harness' any talent; good stuff just flows from talented people in this case. is the first game to come out of Aska Studios. 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We absolutely want to invoke the same type of feelings and experience we remember fondly from our childhood playing some of the early consoles, where you could absolutely get lost in a virtual world and have a great time while doing it. Obviously, a gang of frogs is unique. Why frogs? Halldór Heidberg: Frogs are just fantastic. Our mantra is that Frogs > No frogs. Originally, we had plans to include many types of animals, but as the game progressed, the frogs just stood out as our favourite of the bunch. They are fascinating animals, and a lot of people around the world love them. Being able to interpret different characters as frogs in terms of how they are built, what colours they are and how they accessorize is a fun project as well. But even though the game is called Gang of Frogs, who knows if more types of animals will join the fray? What makes it different from other co-op shooters, aside from the frogs? 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