Typically, most stealth games are a single-player affair, requiring you to use sneaky tricks, disguises and more it order to get around or incapacitate stronger opponents. With Deceive Inc., though, stealth not other becomes a multiplayer affair, but one that requires you to out-stealth other players. Playing as a part of the titular espionage team, the goal is to infiltrate the area, grab the goods, and get out. Deceive Inc. likes to up their success rate by sending several spies at once, however, with only one able to actually keep the money from a successful job. And in a recent demo, I was able to face off against seven other rival spies, equipping whatever spy gadgets and weapons our characters could use before heading out to try and grab some information we were hired to snatch.
The mission started and our group of spies were deployed in the visually impressive ’70s-styled resort, given three different areas with objectives to grab, as indicated by waypoints on our screens. Immediately, I scanned the first person I could in order get a perfect holographic disguise. I decided that I would try to stay low and use stealth to get to the information needed, hoping that the chaos caused by the rival spies would clear a path. The gameplay was nice and easy to learn, with intuitive controls that allow players to move about easily where still scanning guests and digging for hidden intel points required to access certain devices and objects. You quickly got the hang of posing as other guests, using their color-coded clothing to blend in with certain areas, lest you run the risk of exposing yourself to security and other players.
Unfortunately, it would appear my plan to fly under the radar worked a little too well. During my attempts to decode the paths to the objectives, I ended up rarely running into any other players…well, that I knew of, since everyone may have just been successful in staying in disguise. It was also clear that some skirmishes were going down far away from the area I was currently in. I didn’t give it much bother…up until I enter a room with an objective marker, only to find it picked clean, with the victors of said skirmish beating me to the punch. I was present to one player who had stepped out of disguise, however, and decided to get in on the action and engage in a gunfight with them. The other player was killed, taken out of the game and everything important they were carrying was now mine for the taking.
In the end, though, I was finally on the way to success in my initial objective. I had successfully utilized my disguises and gathered up all the keycards and intel points need to enter one of the rooms with a safe guarding the information. At this point, it seemed almost too easy…and it turns out there was a reason for that. After popping the safe open and grabbing its contents, I turned around to see another player/rival spy decloak, apparently having lied in wait until someone could come in and do their dirty work for them. Pistols were immediately whipped out by both of us, and we also tried deploying turrets on the ground as security guards were rushing in. Sadly, my opponent had gotten better of me, taking me out of the game.
So it seems that whether or not you see a lot of action in Deceive Inc. seems to depend on your playstyle or your approach to each objective. But action or not, though, the simple yet fun stealth mechanics, nice variety of gadgets, and gameplay that nicely relies on a keen eye and a good trigger finger could easily make the game a multiplayer gem, and we’ll see if that’s the case when Deceive Inc. finds a way to sneak into digital storefront early next year.
