Deceit 2 has finally been released and I was excited to play! After I had the opportunity to test it out during the Beta, I’m back for the full release, developed and published by World Makers, and I was not let down. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that this is an online PVP game, and there is no option to play against AI. You’ll be pitted against up to eight other players, requiring at least six players to start a match, and once you’re playing, you’ll need to keep your wits about you.

After matchmaking, you will be shown the character you will be playing and which of the three roles you’ll take on. If you’re playing as an Innocent or a Guardian, your goal is to survive, find out who the Infected are, and vote them out before they can eliminate all of the Innocent players. The Guardian is a special role assigned to one member of the Innocents team at the start of the game, and they have a special ability that no other player has – they can protect a player against an Infected player’s Terror form execution during the In-Between phase.

This will prevent the player from being eliminated, but it will only last a single turn, but remember, you need to be careful of who you put the protection on, as it could very well be a member of the Infected team! The Infected players will start the game with Mutations, giving them an advantage when it comes to completing their tasks or diverting attention, such as Turbulence, which teleports everyone to random locations, or Disruption, which remotely destroys a generator.

The gameplay is really intriguing and quite fun, even if you’re not the Infected, and while most rounds of social deduction games will last about five minutes, Deceit 2, due to the number of players and the way that players are eliminated, can go on for much longer. It can be confusing when you first start playing, as it’s not exactly clear where you need to go to complete your tasks, but after a few games, you’ll have the map memorised and smashing out objectives. If you’re suspicious of a player, and you’ve completed a certain number of tasks, you can go to an entity called The Peddler, and they’re happy to give you equipment that can help you survive, with items such as a Clipboard that displays information about other players, or a camera that can temporarily daze the Infected Terror during the In-Between phase.

You need to be wary though, as the Infected can also get their hands on equipment, making it harder to determine who is and isn’t Innocent. There are multiple ways for the Innocents to win, such as voting out all of the Infected players, or they can find a key and escape through the door, however, there is only one way for the Infected to claim victory, and that is by eliminating all of the Innocents, which can’t be that hard, right?

The controls are easy to understand, with most of the buttons appearing on-screen as you need them, or at least hovering over the area they’ll be used. You can also return to the table to remind yourself of what objectives you have, which is quite handy for players who can be forgetful. The Infected have a couple more buttons and keybindings to remember, but after several games slaughtering the Innocents, you’ll easily remember them. Unfortunately, being an online game, I did encounter some performance issues, with quite a bit of stuttering and frame loss, but more related to the controls was the input delays it created, making it harder to time things properly.

When trying out the Beta for Deceit 2, the graphics were decent, and I was a little surprised when I played the full release – the graphics looked great and quite realistic. One of the standout features was a metal bed, of all things, and it looked like you could just walk through the screen and lay down on it in real life. Player models are incredibly well-detailed, each with their own personality and characteristics, and this makes them feel alive.

The music is definitely one of my favourite things in Deceit 2, and with the music on the main menu being as fantastic as it is, I was happy to find out that this was carried through to the gameplay. It felt quite mysterious, and given it’s a game where you don’t know who the enemy is, it’s perfectly fitting. The proximity chat worked really well too – it wasn’t too overpowering and it was perfectly utilised. It made the games so much better being able to plan with players, and hearing what they were thinking added so much extra to the gameplay. Even more awesome was the fact that the voices trailed off as you got further away, so you could stay a fair distance away, but close enough to hear people scheming. One thing I will recommend checking though, is that you set your audio correctly – not doing so can.

I really enjoyed Deceit 2. It’s a game I could see myself Jumping into it constantly. Playing as a member of the Innocents team was really enjoyable, as I knew I could work things out with fellow teammates, and I felt like I knew who to trust and who not to. I really liked The Peddler as well, knowing that all players were able to access the shop at certain times, and being able to purchase different items makes the games feel different, which is great considering there’s only one map. Even with some performance issues, I still had a blast surviving against the Infected, and I hope you do too!

Written by: Mitchell Batchelor