There’s been a murder. It’s up to you and up to 23 other people to solve it. Thankfully, there are some clues at the crime scene. You piece them together and unmask the killer. Oh no! The killer and their compatriots have started shooting up the place and throwing grenades. Oops. But such is the crime-solving life, at least with Killer Inn.
While there are many social deduction games out there, like Among Us, Square Enix has decided to throw its own mystery-solving hat into the ring. Killer Inn aims to stand out from the pack by combining social deduction with the team shooter genre. And it mixes a bit like whiskey and cranberry sauce. Which is to say, interestingly yet questionably.
In Killer Inn, up to 24 players split into two teams. The game designates around 16 players as “Lambs” and around 8 as “Wolves.” The Wolves must hunt the Lambs. Meanwhile, the Lambs must either escape the castle they’re in by finding keys or unmask the Wolves and defeat them.
It’s a bit like the party game Werewolf, but if a discovered Werewolf (or target) could simply overturn their fate through sheer force. Killer Inn also tasks players with scouring the castle for “quests.” And crucially, these mini-games reward coins, which players may use to purchase weapons.
Putting the Ideas of KILLER INN into Practice
In theory, Killer Inn‘s gameplay loop is a great idea. Ideally, the many weapons, gear, and items would give incentives for players to complete the quests. In turn, this would give them a better chance of survival or pulling off a kill. It would also encourage players to chat with one another, sharing information and debating who to trust to provide safety (or strength) in numbers. In theory.
In practice, it’s lopsided. At the end of the day, much of who defeats whom has to do more with skill and luck than strategy or teamwork. As such, games often devolve into shooting matches after just a couple of minutes, once each player has gotten a weapon. At this point, looking for clues or doing quests essentially becomes meaningless.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a good shooter. It’s just that Killer Inn becomes a shooter with extra steps. And with so many weapons, both range and melee, each seems to have a different button for use. It’s especially annoying when these buttons have multiple purposes. For example, I once pressed triangle to track a quest when prompted, but due to a player being next to me, it put them in a chokehold and strangled them instead. Oops.
A Short Interrogation
While Killer Inn does allow for proximity chat, I found that people don’t use it. I can’t exactly blame them, as nobody likes to hear a ten-year-old’s prosaic musings on your mom anymore. But a social deduction game should ideally encourage conversation. It seems like once people realized they could just start shooting and ask questions later (or never), talking became unnecessary.
As such, in Killer Inn’s defense, having friends to play with seems like the way to go. I haven’t tried this yet, but I suspect it could make the game much more strategic. While matches tend to devolve into chaos, having friends would mean that you can’t just constantly get into firefights with randos, encouraging collecting clues or picking people off together to get more mileage out of the gameplay.
Lambs in a World of Wolves
As it stands, it’s more fun to play as a Wolf than a Lamb. If Lambs attack another Lamb, they get turned to stone. But Wolves can see who all the Lambs are, so they can start shooting. As Greedo and Han learned, fights often get decided by who shot first. But aside from this gimmicky reason, it’s also more enjoyable to cover up crime scenes to ensure that you can consistently get the drop on teammates.
Even playing solo, Killer Inn has flashes of success. For the Lambs to escape, they have to get keys by defeating Guardians, floating orbs that fire lasers. While it can be done without any help from others, that would prove tedious. So it’s one gameplay aspect that necessitates teamwork, even if in a barebones way. I would love to see the game scale a bit more in the direction of rewarding teamwork.
And as hinted above, the game does have deduction elements, even if they seldom, if ever, come into actual play. This is a shame, because they seem really inventive. But by investigating a crime scene, players can gain clues, markers that narrow down who committed a murder. Lambs can, in theory, share these with other Lambs and mark suspected Wolves. I say “in theory” because the markers are so finicky that they don’t really work unless both players stay relatively still. On the Wolf side, they can conceal or destroy evidence, which proves easier to do. Another reason why they’re more fun.
KILLER INN Overall Impressions
In Killer Inn’s current state, “solving a murder” generally means just watching whichever player does it in plain sight and then shooting at them. Matches typically don’t last very long. It’s a shame, because Killer Inn has the potential to be a unique social deduction game. If weapons couldn’t be used out in the open or even if the Wolves didn’t know who all the Lambs were, I could see Killer Inn leaning more into its mystery-themed element.
The game is in early access, so there is hope. Square Enix is no stranger to pulling off a turnaround, having previously brought Final Fantasy XIV back from the brink. As Killer Inn stands, it feels more like Knives Out, but with the killer simply getting into a firefight with Benoit Blanc before the mystery even gets solved.
Killer Inn is currently available for PC via Steam Early Access. A full release will come at a later date.
