Spyparty steam
For a project that's burned through Hecker's life savings over its extensive development period, that prospect is both daunting and, for obvious reasons, exciting. By way of comparison, there are about 67 million people that use Steam. SpyParty hasn't exactly been unavailable despite not being on Steam: Hecker sells it through, where he's sold 24,000 copies at $15 a pop. Or maybe they're acting a little too much like a computer? That's the game, in a nutshell. It sounds simple, and it is. The spy must mimic the actions of an NPC even as they go about deliberate actions, the sniper must determine which of these characters is exhibiting human characteristics. What follows is an immense, overwhelming and complicated psychological minefield played out in a dozen simplistic moments. The sniper is sitting outside the party and watching through a scope - it's their job to figure out which character is the spy and kill them with their one, single bullet.
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The spy is set down in a little party full of computer-controlled characters and given a series of tasks. It's an asymmetric competitive multiplayer game where one person plays a sniper, and another person plays the spy.
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It combines text and voice to teach newcomers how to play what is a hard to master competitive multiplayer game.For those just joining us, SpyParty is one of the most unique, strangest games on the market. Hecker says he tried to make SpyParty's tutorial a version of the teachers who helped players at video game event PAX in bot form. The theatrical lighting has been pushed here, "like you would if you were having a cocktail party at your mansion on the outskirts of London", Hecker says.Įlsewhere, the user interface has been reworked to make it fit for launch on Steam. Here's what it looks like in the Steam launch build:Ĭourtyard is an arty outdoor sculptural homage to Alan Turing. Pub is a level with a, you guessed it, pub, named after Sherlock Holmes character Irene Adler. Here's what it used to look like:Īnd here's what it looks like for the Steam release. Take Balcony, a level with an architecture style based on a pre-war building in Chelsea in New York City, for example. I had the chance to see the new and improved SpyParty in action at the recent Game Developers Conference, and it's safe to say the game has come on a long way in recent years. The Steam release has eight missions, a replay system with over 300,000 games in its database and a 40 minute, fully narrated (by Chris Hecker himself) interactive tutorial to help teach newcomers how to play. The idea is the player isn't supposed to be able to work out the year in which the game is set. SpyParty has a "timeless" style, as Hecker describes it, with environmental props that could have existed in multiple modern eras.
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Things are about to change for SpyParty, though, as it launches on the biggest video game platform on earth.Īs such, Hecker has spruced up the game's visuals, with 21 new art characters with custom animations and 10 new art venues. Almost 24,000 copies have so far been sold on the official SpyParty website, where there is a small but bustling community of players. Games last a few minutes each, with matches usually involving 10 or 20 games.Ĭhris Hecker, who led the development of much of the tech behind Maxis' Spore, has worked on SpyParty for eight years. The skill comes from sniffing out unusual behaviour, or making your behaviour as "usual" as possible while completing mission objectives. In SpyParty, one player is the sniper, the other the spy who tries to avoid detection by mingling with a crowd of fancy partygoers.
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Chris Hecker has been working on SpyParty for eight years. SpyParty, the two-player competitive spy versus sniper game set at an exclusive cocktail party, comes out on Steam as an Early Access title on 12th April priced £19.49.