This is the spiritual successor to The Ship (but not legally - a different publisher). The premise is that you’re on the movie set of a famous horror director… who makes the most authentic movies by actually having his actors killed.
In the default gameplay mode, you get a target that you must assassinate, and someone else has you as their target. You get punished for killing random people. No one knows who’s targetting who except that every hunter knows their target and their general location.
The game has up to 16 players running around, all with a different agenda, and you need to try to figure out who your hunter is while finding your own prey, while also disguising your intentions.
You get a number of fame points (the game’s score) based on which weapon you use (the least used weapons become more valuable until someone uses one), and whether or not you taunt and humiliate your target.
You have sims-style needs to take care of - sleep, food, and bathroom - you’re vulnerable while you take a few seconds to take care of them, but if you don’t, you’ll start suffering penalties. One of the first times I was killed was when I snuck off to use the bathroom, my killer found me, and sent a remote controlled explosive rat. Blew me right off the toilet. That’s how my grandpa went too.
The game is more cartoony than the ship - the art is stylized and the weapons are more over the top. It ranges from frying pans to rocket launchers. There are now “murder aids” like a tranquilizer gun and things along that line to disable your prey and your hunters.
There are also more types of games. It has 3 minute rounds, about 10 of which are played every map. Most of them are the default game mode (the hunt) but sometimes it throws in others. In one, for example, it becomes a zombie film where half the players are infected and the other aren’t, and you have to touch one of the uninfected players as a zombie to pass it on and be cured yourself. There’s another game mode where you try to get ahold of a golden-globe type award and hold it while everyone else tries to hunt you down. There are several other game modes that I haven’t played yet.
Like the ship, unfortunately the weapon placement is random. It’d be much more interesting if, say, a kitchen knife was the top-rated weapon to kill with, so people naturally gravitated towards the kitchen to get some. Instead, you get boxes around the map spawning random weapons. And so far there are only 3 maps, although they seem to be well made.
Anyway, it’s only $5 and I’m having a blast. At this price everyone should try it.
