Cutthroat

I first noticed this game because it was very similar to a gamejam game me and a couple of friends made for GGJ 2014. If you're interested in it, it's called "Manhattan". I'm not ashamed to say, this game is a lot better than the game we made. This game is what I would call a hidden crowd game. Basically, there is a crowd of non-player characters that look identical to the player characters, and it is the player's task to conduct an objective without being noticed by other players. This is primarily accomplished through careful movement and crowd navigation, in order to decieve opponents into thinking that you are an NPC. In this particular game, the objective is to kill your opponents. This is done through moving up to the suspected player and attacking (by pressing X). This instantly kills them and awards you with one point. This dynamic is made complicated by the different player classes available. At the beginning of each round, players anonymously choose a class, which comes with 2 unique abilites. One ability can be used once, the other can be used three times, but both interact with the gameplay in interesting ways. Will you be a Warrior, who can cause a crowd of npcs to attack, or a Ranger, who can feign death by tricking an opponent into thinking they killed an NPC? A Rogue, who can clandestinely kill a player without making any noise or visual cue? Or a Wizard, who can teleport and polymorph foes. I feel these different classes are well-tested and had real thought put into them. I hope this game is successful enough to add additional classes, maps, and modes. Don't misunderstand me though, the game is well made as it is. Hidden crowd games are an exciting genre that is just getting started, and I hope this game carves out a name for itself on the ground floor.

A review for this game is the hardest thing to say about it since it's so great, Like these Devs earned this game on steam and the BETA was amazing This game is very wonderful for a stealthy assassin game, If you ever played one you know they not easy to make but not the hardest and the mind games are insane, This game was a very declious game to dig my teeth into and I will be playing this game now and then and more when the updates role in, For real this game is so simple but so fun the art I love it The Art: It feel cartoony but it's amazing Gameplay:10/10 - Mind games are very fun to play I know I got rekt but I wanted to keep going xD PS: I did got this game free but I earned it from being top 10, and that alone was amazing to play in. <3 Devs:Anzoc,Verese,Kaelaholmen

Disclosure of Potential Bias: I know the developers (I grew up two houses down from one of them!) and have seen the game (and played it) since its earliest iteration (all the way back to when the devs would throw a Codefest in the dorms at our uni and we would all hang out: playing games, coding stuff, plus eating hot pockets, chips, and walmart bakery cookies; ah, college life). /waves at Ocumens developers TLDR: Cutthroat has a low barrier to entry (controls are easy), but has a high skill cap (git gud at pattern recognition) and even a metagame (better track the amount of times a warrior Riots, or if a mage has Soul-Swapped yet, and many more things) because the game forces you to be stealthy to be successful. You can play this game with your parents (or, if you're a parent, with your younger kids and your partner) and everyone can have fun within just a few rounds (you learn the controls very quickly). I don't do to well with most party games (local multiplayer pvp games), but I've found Cutthroat to be a pleasant exception. The game relies much less on memorizing zillions of fighting combinations, rather, the controls are easy and quick to learn...the real challenge (and what makes it so fun) of Cutthroat is successfully differentiating between other players and a bunch of AI NPCs based soley on observing all characters' movements. There are no nameplates/name tags in Cutthroat so the first step you must take in game is to find your character based on how you're moving via your controller or your keyboard inputs, then, you must try to stay hidden from other players by mimicking the movement style of the many AI NPCs roaming around the map...all while trying to spot other players by looking for characters who are not moving in an AI-like manner. That's why Cutthroat is a local stealth-based pvp game...there are no character names so you have to get good at spotting movement patterns! If you make a bad guess and attack a suspicious character that turns out to be an AI NPC...guess what, you just revealed yourself to all the other players, but this can occasionally work to your advantage because you can identity other players by how they move in reaction to your action. Imagine trying to move towards a player who just revealed their position by attacking (NPCs don't attack), but having to move in a deliberately stealthy manner (mimicking AI NPCs movement) so that that player and the other players don't spot you moving towards that player. Cutthroat has a very low barrier to entry, because the controls are easy, but has a high skill cap (which means you can play many many games with your friends and still not get bored...I've played many hours of rounds by this point and still haven't gotten bored of the game, because the skill cap is so high and there is a good stealthy metagame going on) since you must get very good at recognizing certain kinds of movement patterns, consciously move your character in a stealthy manner while also watching for other player characters, and deal with the special moves that each class has, plus deal with environmental features on some maps that shake things up. If you like playing games with other people primarily in person, or even online if you can't meet up in person (there is an online mode, but to set up a session you will need to be on voice comms with your friends since you have to tell them the name of the room you created as well as whether you are playing ranked or unranked; there is currently no game lobby setup), and enjoy stealthy games that are easy to get into but hard to master, then Cutthroat is a good game for you to play!

I recommend to buy the game from itch.io. I got the steam key from itch.io, but the steam version is unplayable. Even when I choose "local" play it says that "account already logged in" and "wrong password" and does not allow to any controller or keyboard to join, but the itch.io version works well and the game is very good. But this review is for the steam version and this game is not functional.