The Killer In, unveiled at the Summer Game Fest Showcase this morning, is a whole new IP from Square Enix, developed in collaboration with Tactic Studios and TBS Games. Touted as a murder mystery action game, Killerin sees 24 players stopping by a team of wolves and lambs, where social deductions are combined with skill-based shooting and close combat.
Draw inspiration from many different asymmetric multiplayer games to create your own experience. Perhaps best described as a fusion between us and a fusion between daytime, killer-in divides players between hunters and hunting. The wolves win the round by killing all the lambs, and the lamb wins either with identification and murder or with wolves or by fleeing the fatal inn.
Once the round begins, you can collect items to complete the quest, increasing your chances of winning. Weapons and armor of many varieties can be found around the inn. Quests also award tokens that can be used to unlock chests that house more powerful weapons and armor. If everything else fails, you can even use your naked fist in the fight.
However, much of the game appears to be about the social deduction aspect. Every time a wolf kills, they leave a clue whether it’s hair, skin fragments, or blood spots. Ultimately, the clue will lead you to the wolf. But if you accidentally kill the lamb in a hurry, you will be killed too, encouraging perseverance and wise decision-making when it comes to accusations and conflicts.
The map also includes secure zones supervised by NPC staff. These are not kill zones where violent acts are accompanied by rapid punishment. They seem to act as a safe haven for discussion using in-game voice chat, but being too long means swapping experience, gold and gear.
There is also a very large roster of characters here, each with unique skills that lean towards a specific playstyle. As players die, the prize money grows and offers some progression to spend more money on non-round items. When 24 players enter a match, there are countless character combinations that will shake up how the round unfolds.
It’s unclear when Killer In will be released, but the team is about to run a closed beta on Steam in the near future to test the stability of the server and collect player feedback.
