Deceive Inc. I Spy Something Fun

There's a lot of fun to be had in single-player games, but multiplayer and online titles dominate a lot of the playing field. There are many different types of competitive scenarios from deathmatches to capture the flag. You can try to make your own mark or team up with others, but not every match can be won so gung ho. That's why Sweet Bandits is presenting players with a chance to be sneaky as well as skillful with Deceive Inc. coming up. As an animated spy, jump into a complex setting in order to confront your enemies and prove you're the best operative.

There's a lot of fantasy built around the spy game but that doesn't mean that it's not without value. Stories and scenarios involving secret agents can be quite exciting and entertaining which is what Deceive Inc. is leaning hard towards. As one of several members of a secret organization, your goal is to team up with your fellow spies in order to carry out the objective. Each location you go to has highly sensitive information and material that you'll need to extract for your side. Of course, competing spies will try to get there first so you'll need to use subterfuge combined with combat in order to win.

The best spies can get in and out of something without people ever knowing they were there and they need the best tactics to do that. Deceive Inc. employs a lot of these tactics in its design. The first is the overall tone and atmosphere. The moment you sign in, you get the idea that it will be over the top. You get a whole roster of colorful spies to choose from who all fit into exaggerated and colorful spy stereotypes to make for amusing picks. All the environments feel like they could belong in classic spy movies where gadgets were so convenient yet impossible. It doesn't take itself seriously while still presenting serious competition.

Then there's the gameplay itself. It's a very fast-paced first-person shooter where the goal is to complete a number of tasks as quickly as you can. You have a number of defensive mechanics and tools to get around as best as you can with individual character abilities changing up the available strategies. It's another game where taking out opponents isn't the priority which allows a greater range of players to take part and contribute in significant ways. There's an actual risk to going in guns blazing as that only makes you a bigger target. With such an over-the-top feel, both following the mission and hunting for enemies is very entertaining.

Finally, there are the aesthetics to bring it home. This game is created to be campy and energetic to make a light-hearted spy experience with sufficient action to go along with it. The characters are rounded and animated and the environments are smooth and vibrant. It's reminiscent of older James Bond films where everything was enjoyable, yet there were still things at stake.

When you're a spy, the goal is to keep that fact under wraps as long as you can. The problem is that Deceive Inc. does some things that would expose itself in the field. The main issue is that the game fails to take into account how players will behave. Though the environment will be littered with NPCs that move about randomly, players can still be easy to spot in a crowd. They move backwards, jump out windows, and strafe which all stand out. As long as you play, you'll instantly know what's out of place.

Then there's a certain amount of imbalance. Though there's a range of different characters to choose from, all with different abilities and weapons, some will prove to be the favorites. Why pick a rapid-fire attacker with less control over a precision long-range attacker who's still pretty fast? This can also be seen in the range of abilities that are available to each character with some being more desirable than others. It'd be interesting to see additional characters and the option to swap out abilities between them while keeping the weapons to maintain more individuality.

Lastly, there's a lack of game modes for the time being. The current objective so far is to activate terminals in order to sneak into a vault and steal packages. This can be pretty engaging but also limiting. Here's hoping that more competitive spy-related tasks will be introduced with a wider range of gadgets to accomplish them.

Deceive Inc. is an upcoming first-person online multiplayer game about spies undercover fighting each other to steal a package. It has a wonderfully camp atmosphere, aesthetics to match, and fast-paced dynamic gameplay. It's still lacking additional game modes, character balancing, and compensating for player behavior. Against all this, being a spy has been made to be fun, wacky, yet still intense when you work at Deceive Inc.

TechRaptor previewed Deceive Inc. on PC at an event set up by the game's publisher. The game is set to release sometime in 2023.