Deceit Review – Infectious Fun
Even though the hype behind Dead By Daylight has waned ever since October of last year, it was able to maintain a consistent and decently sized player base on Steam – not so much for Friday the 13th. This consistency has mainly been due to Dead By Daylight’s addicting cat-and-mouse gameplay.
Deceit was released on Steam on March 3, 2017 for $10 and was seen as a possible competitor to the likes of Dead By Daylight and Friday the 13th. Deceit’s player base remains relatively small for 6 months, but with the help of notable streamers streaming the game, its player base started to grow significantly from around 1,000 players to a peak of 16,503 players. The game never seemed to gain enough traction though and the player base started to rapidly decline as streamers lost interest in the game. I found this surprising since Deceit is offering an equally refined experience as Dead By Daylight and more in a free-to-play package ever since October 13, 2017. Even though some minor balancing issues slightly hold the game back, this package presents a thrilling experience full of trust, betrayal, paranoia, and surprisingly deep tactics.
In Deceit, there are a total of six players in each match. Two players are given the role of infected whose objective is to collect enough blood packs scattered around the map in order to transform into their “terror” form during the blackout period and eliminate all the innocents. The four players that are given the part of innocent are tasked with surviving all three stages of the map and ultimately escape to freedom.
The catch is that who is infected is unknown to the innocents. This brings an interesting dynamic where innocents don’t know who to trust and infected have to gain innocents’ trust while going on their blood bag hunt without getting caught. This means that every match has an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion that keeps players constantly on their toes. Only through discussion, observation, and a little bit of luck can innocents weed out infected players.
When a player suspects a possible infected, they can down the suspect by taking away all their health. Once a player is down during the light period, others players can determine whether or not to eliminate that player from the match. Damaging a downed player means you cast a vote against that player. If a downed player does not receive enough votes within a certain time, they will get back up. This mechanic it double edged sword for the innocents since they will not know whether or not the person voted off is infected or innocent until the end of the match.
Scattered across each of the three stages are objectives that reward special items such as traps, cameras, antidotes, scanners, shotguns, etc. These items are essential if an innocent wants to survive all three blackout periods and escape with their lives, but these objectives can also keep innocents occupied enough for infected players to snatch blood bags without detection.
There are three terror forms to choose from, each with their own unique abilities and stats. The Experiment, the default terror, has the ability to send a decoy that is a copy of itself that runs in a straight line for a five second duration, making innocents distracted enough to go for the kill. It also is an all-rounder in terms of stats where it has a balance between speed and the amount of damage it can from innocents before being downed. The Yeti terror form is the slowest of all the terror forms, but can take the most damage. With its Frozen Fury ability, you become invulnerable to both physical damage and light affects for a few seconds, but reduce your already slow speed, perfect for closing the extra distance on an innocent trapped in the corner. The Werewolf form can only be unlocked if you purchase the DLC and it is the fastest out of the bunch, but is pretty squishy. That squishiness is made up with the ability called Outcry which causes all human characters within your proximity to have blurred vision for a few seconds, giving you a chance to pounce on them.
Bullet vests are scattered all over the map which will provide players with armor. Armor lessens bullet damage as well, making it harder for players to knock you down. If you land a melee hit in the front of an unarmored human character, there will be a small animation and the character will be incapacitated only to be revived by a player with an antidote, but if the character has armor, it will take a few melee slashes before you can down them. Beware of other players with cameras though since a flash from a camera will cause you to lose your grasp on an innocent player.
When the black out period ultimately comes and infected players can unleash their terror forms, the innocents will have to collect fuses spread out randomly throughout the map and put those fuses in fuse boxes. This will make lights come on much faster. Innocents during this blackout period don’t just have to worry about terrors, but also have to keep an eye on players since infected players not in terror form can collect fuses and not put them in the fuse box in an attempt to prolong the blackout period.
Deceit is built on a solid foundation and premise. Games, especially with six friends, can become extremely tense and competitive, even frightening at points when the lights eventually shut off and your vision becomes limited. Being an innocent can be like being a character in a horror as you feel alone, not knowing who to trust, being hyper alert at all times and in a perpetual state of paranoia. As an infected, it feels tremendously satisfying to deceive innocent players, shift the blame so innocent players begin to thin their numbers and you didn’t even have to eliminate them yourself. Words themselves can certainly win you the game as an infected.
With so many factors in game like Deceit, it can be difficult to strike a good balance between infected and innocents and I don’t think Deceit is quite there yet. For newer players, it may seem pretty skewed towards the infected since it takes a decent amount of games to get familiar with the items and utilize them to their full potential, but innocents that know what they are doing can easily down a “terror” form infected before it’s even within striking distance. Intelligent and assertive innocent players can also take over the game and discover the infected players through process of elimination. It will definitely take skilled maneuvering, smart thinking, and a slick tongue to catch experienced innocents off guard.
There are a few balancing issues in Deceit, but players can rest assured that the microtransactions in the game are not one of them. All of them are cosmetics such as skins and poses for the 6 distinct characters and “terror” types. Players can also get these cosmetics for free by earning coins as they play the game and level up. These coins are used to play a minigame where the player follows their desired cup in order to received a skin of a higher rarity.
Deceit also has a perk tree and while it does not necessarily ruin the game’s balancing, it certainly does hinder it. The perk tree in Deceit is similar to perk trees from single player RPGs where you spend points to unlock innocent and infected attributes that give you a slight edge in matches. These points are earned from every match you play. There are perks such as respawning faster when you are downed in “terror” form, increasing the trigger and blast radius of traps, and making blood drinking quieter.
Like most perk trees, you will have to unlock certain perks before you are able to unlock others on the tree, but in Deceit, players cannot use every single perk they unlock. Players will have to create a perk tree “path” where they can only choose up to 13 perks that runs down the entire perk tree. While I understand that the perk tree is important in giving players a sense of progression in the game and keeps players playing the game, it puts new players in a slight disadvantage when they go up against players that have played the game longer.
Something that can certainly keep players playing the game, is a bigger map pool. Deceit only boasts three maps called Dunning Kruger Asylum, Darkwood Forest, and Woundwart Barracks – Darkwood being the most balanced map out of the three. Asylum’s winding hallways and dim lighting makes it hard to navigate even when the lights are on and Barracks’ small first stage makes it hard for infected to consume blood without detection, but each map brings a different dynamic to how you are supposed to play which makes each map refreshing to play despite the small number of maps. I just would like to see more maps in the future.
The biggest balancing problem in Deceit is the camera item in the game. The camera is easily the most powerful item in the game due to its ability to blind and slow down “terror” by a significant amount. A perk also increases the camera’s effectiveness by 10% which even adds more to the problem. Even though the yeti “terror” form can negate the camera’s effects for a few seconds, once to grab an innocent player, the camera’s flash from another player will free your victim. This also makes the flashlight item completely useless since the flashlight only blinds “terror.” I believe the developers have to find a balance between these two items.
While you can compare Deceit to asymmetrical multiplayers like Dead By Daylight and Friday the 13th, Deceit a unique game with a fantastic concept. Playing with randoms might give you mixed results in terms of enjoyability, but play with friends and you will experience matches full of excitement, paranoia, unpredictability, and suspense. A few balancing issues hold the game back from being a truly competitive game, but if the developers, Automaton, choose to continue working and polishing this game, I believe that this game will shine bright enough that it can’t be ignored.
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Written by EvenMarc
The thoughts and opinions of the author does not represent all @munchiehaus members.