Paranoia is at the heart of any great horror experience. It’s a feeling that sticks with you and guides your actions regardless of their rationality. This was what caused me to gun down two of my friends over nothing more than fear and lies – virtually, of course. Enter Deceit, an independent horror game developed and published by Mostly Positive.
Available on the PC, Deceit tasks you and five other players with surviving a night in a handful of different creepy locations. Two of the six players are monsters and they have to brutally murder the other four survivors before they can escape. The catch is everyone appears to be normal and only the two monsters know they are infected. This crafts an experience where every action, decision, and even word you speak determines your survival. Deceit asks players to both trust and distrust one another because you will almost never know for sure who is on your side.
This is a recipe for any great multiplayer experience and a few other notable titles have used this concept. Where Deceit differs is it’s aiming to not be funny or light-hearted, but absolutely terrifying. Environments harken back to classic horror settings such as a haunted mansion, tangled forest, and a research base in the Arctic. Every game is defined by two phases – light and dark – with the former acting as a way for players to gather supplies and the latter giving the monsters a chance to turn the tide of battle.
Only when it’s dark an infected player can turn into a monster allowing them to instantly kill players. To do this they need to collect blood samples scattered around the map. Since players can see you take blood bags, the infected need to either grab them when everyone is busy or try to shift the blame onto other players. This is where the paranoia begins to seep in because unless you visually catch someone in the act you are going off their word that they didn’t touch the blood.
Since all you need to do is press a key to take blood, it’s possible to gobble up this resource quickly. In one of my first games, a big argument broke out amongst everyone allowing someone to grab more blood. This poured more fuel onto an already raging fire as trust broke down between the six players. Since anyone can be “voted out” of the game after taking too much damage, alliances began forming to try and control the majority of votes. One missing blood bag shattered every promise we made during the course of the match.
Deceit masterfully stokes these paranoia-driven fires by having some of the blood bags just vanish when it gets dark – regardless if someone drank from it or not. The game never explains this mechanic and cheekily gives the appearance of the infected drinking more blood than they actually have. On top of that, there are random NPC monsters hanging about that will groan and yell if you get to close. They can’t hurt you, but their sounds are exactly the same as the player-controlled monsters.
There are also a handful of gadgets that can be used, but the infected players can use them too when in human form. By doing this, Deceit allows the player’s own imagination and fears make them question every decision made. Is that guy hoarding all the items because he’s infected? Are the two monsters working together to get the shotgun? Is asking for traps going to look too suspicious? Everything is built upon flimsy – often false – promises and reassurances about their intentions.
Things get even worse because you have no way of determining who is infected before a match starts. During my first night playing with friends, I ended up being a survivor for 9 games in a row. My friends took notice of this and by the fourth game, I was always a top contender for being one of the infected. Nothing I would say or do could convince them I was a survivor. Their distrust and sheer paranoia made them believe I was always infected. I mean, how can someone be so unlucky at not being a monster, right? This led them to kill me quite a few times even though I was trying my best to prove I wasn’t the enemy.
In contrast, the monsters have to make the players afraid and unsure of their own decisions. The infected have no real advantage when it’s light out, so users have to rely on their own words and other’s actions. It’s your job to shine a light on all the imperfections of a person’s attitude or movements. Since the infected know who is a monster and who isn’t, they can sell lies by agreeing with one another. This makes any alliance sketchy because how do we know they aren’t the monsters working together?
This is how I turned on two friends in one match and ended up killing them. A buddy – who ended up being infected – pointed out that these two people were always together. All of my attention foolishly shifted to these people as I watched them from afar. Eventually, their random excursions away from the group caused me to turn on them. With the help of the infected, I knocked down and voted my own allies out of the game.
I was promptly killed by the infected thirty seconds later.
While Deceit is not a perfect game by any means, it’s unique design allows us to project our own fears onto others. Mostly Positive turns our imagination against us and utilizes it as a tool to scare players. This makes the final moments of realization before you die or escape truly horrific. Every choice, lie, and backstab comes to light when those monsters emerge from the darkness. Then when the dust settles, you take this fear and bring it into the next game. Everyone’s a liar. Everyone’s a monster. Nowhere is safe.
It’s a type of terror very few games can instill – a true feeling of paranoia.
Deceit is on PC now and is free-to-play.
