The Best Spy Shooter You Aren't Playing

Deceive Inc. is a multiplayer first person spy shooter, developed by Sweet Bandits Studios.

The objective of Deceive Inc. is simple. You and a number of opponents enter one of five unique missions. Missions range from an office complex, to a high-profile auction, to an underwater hotel hosting a fashion show, and beyond. Your mission is to collect evidence and escape the map with a heavily guarded package. During your play session, you will find locked vault devices. When the competitors unlock three of these devices, the vault holding your loot will be unlocked. This vault is heavily guarded, so you will have to use your stealth abilities to work your way through to the package. Grabbing the package and escaping through one of the few extraction points is the final goal.

Sounds easy right? Not exactly! Along the way, you and your opponents have the ability to disguise as other non-playable characters that are scattered around the map. The characters range from your everyday cubicle worker, to hospitality workers, to armed guards, and the list goes on. At any time, you can go up to one of these characters and take their disguise. However, when you take on a new disguise, a small aura will emit that allows other players in the surrounding area to be aware that you are not who you claim to be. So be careful with your disguise swaps, or it may be the end of your time in the mission. One tip I can give new players is to actually play the tutorial! This isn’t your traditional first person shooter; there’s more to it. The tutorial gives you a good idea of the nuances of the game loop.

Deceive Inc. currently has ten different playable characters, each with their own additional abilities and unique weapons. One character has a powerful but slow slingshot, one character has an arm mounted shotgun, another has a crossbow, and one of my favorites can dual wield pistols. When you first load up the game, you will have three of these characters unlocked. As you play as these characters, you will get a sense of which ones you enjoy most and you’ll also get a sense of the other characters as you play against other players that may have already unlocked the other characters. After each mission, you will receive a number of credits used to unlock the additional characters. Some characters suit an individual player better than others, so make sure you try them all! Unlocking all of the characters does not feel like a chore, you’ll unlock them in no time!

Visually, the game is beautiful. Deceive Inc. takes inspiration from vintage spy thrillers and merges it with a cartoony, almost Overwatch like look. Each character has a dozen or so unlockable skin variants, most of which are unlocked with in game currency. You can pay real money for additional outfits and perks, but none of it feels like it is necessary to enjoy the game.

And now we get to negatives for the game. The player base of Deceive Inc. is very small. For whatever reason, the game isn’t being advertised as well as it should be. Luckily, I’ve still been able to find a match relatively quickly, even with the small player base. Another negative is that the game can be a little rough at first for newcomers. Most of the players have been playing Deceive Inc. since it was first released and have worked out a lot of the small tells that a newbie can give off, such as walking patterns (again, make sure you play that tutorial! It’ll give you ideas on how to better maneuver the map).

Deceive Inc. is developed by Sweet Bandits Studios and published by Tripwire Interactive. You can find Deceive Inc. on PC (Steam/Epic), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. The game goes for $19.99, but also can regularly be found on sale.

Overall, Deceive Inc. is a lot of fun, even with the problems I do have with the game. I give it a 4/5 and would highly recommend giving it a shot!

Disclosure: I received a free review copy for this game. No developer, publisher, or anyone else associated with the game had any input on my review.

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