Announced during this year's Summer Game Fest, Square Enix's next game is a little different from its RPG hits. Killer Inn is an upcoming murder mystery that pits 24 players against each other in a game of deception. I went hands-on with the title for a couple of hours before the launch of its closed beta, which is releasing Friday.
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
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