Deceit 2 is a free-to-play game and crossplay game created and published by World Makers. The objective of the game is to finish the round as either of the three roles, you may share information with other players or lie to them to throw them off as you will need to kill each other and vote out players to win as a team.

Players will be randomly assigned to teams, The Innocents must either vote out the Infected team or complete all tasks and escape to win the trial. The Infected must secretly transform into a monster during nighttime phases and kill other players to win. Then we have the Cursed, this is a bit of a wild card as only one person can be Cursed, and they are neither good nor bad. The Cursed can mimic the role of a dead player so their winning conditions are based on the player they are mimicking, so if you plan it right and know who is Infected you can use your power to take their role and give the Infected team an advantage or you can become an Innocent and work with others to win the game.

When you first start playing it is confusing as there is no training to teach you the ropes, but it is swift to pick up. Tasks for players to interact with will have a blue human figure in front of them, the tasks can range from easy puzzles like memory with 6 cards, to cracking wall safes, but keep in mind if you are running with a group of players and watching each other do tasks. Infected players can do tasks so that will not clear them as Innocent, you can’t trust anyone.

There is a way to rule out who is what role with a tester, but do keep in mind the tester can only be used once and the result of the tester is only shown to the player that interacts with the computer, so if you are Infected and happen to be running the test you can easily throw another player under the bus saying that they are Infected.

Players will be able to visit a store during the match and gain items to either help defend themselves from other players, such as a gun, or light traps, but you will also be able to get some fun to-use items like a ball and chain that will keep a player stuck for a few seconds or a GPS tracker that you can place on people so you can see where they are at all times.

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 need to be used. You can also return to the table to remind yourself of your objectives, which is quite handy for players who can be forgetful.

The Infected have a couple more buttons and key bindings 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. It created a control input delay which made it harder to time things properly.

The realistic graphics of both the environment and character design are done with a dark theme. As you run around while the lights go on and off, the vibe given off overall fits well with the theme of the game. Sadly, I do wish there were more maps available to play on as one map does get easy to learn and just slightly boring.

The music is 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 well but sadly does suffer from the issues of immature players throwing out a lot of racial slurs in every sentence, so if you are going to stream it be aware that the chat can be toxic for zero reason, but playing with friends or a great group of people will be ideal.

In Conclusion, Deceit 2 is a twisted game of trust that is fun with friends being able to throw each other under the bus and gaslight each other, it makes for some great friend-breaking moments. While playing with randoms is fun you will sadly encounter a lot of racial slurs and just overly aggressive people for no reason whatsoever.

Written by: Shane Walsh