I had a chance to try out Eville this past week, and I came away from it hungry for more. Eville is a game that’s in the same vein as games such as Among Us or Garry’s Mod’s infamous Murder game mode. One or more players are traitors and will lie, cheat, and kill in order to take out all of the surviving townsfolk. This take on the formula is actually very impressive and adds numerous layers over what other games in the genre have done.

I was lucky enough to be invited to join a play session with the dev team over at VestGames as well as fellow press members and content creators. It’s definitely a more hilarious and cohesive game when you’re using voice-chat as we did. The banter and lies go on throughout the game and it can either make it easier to spot the baddies or make it more difficult. It was a blast!

There are different roles that each player is given at the start of the game and these roles will heavily impact what happens. Mayors can influence voting, Trappers can try and nab the murderers themselves, and Detectives can get an extra leg up on finding clues to solve the caper. There are so many more than that and it’s really unique to see how the game can turn. I unfortunately only played as a citizen so I was mostly running around as fodder for most of the time.

The game also has a day and night cycle where the gameplay will change drastically. During the day, you’ll talk to townsfolk, do quests, buy items, and try to figure out who the killers are. At night, however, things change. You’re pretty much helpless as your character sleeps and you eagerly wait for the sun to rise again. The reason is, a killer can sneak in at any time and take you out as you slumber. It’s pretty anxiety-filled because watching someone kill your character is a pretty upsetting experience.

Besides the gameplay mechanics, we also learned a couple of things about Eville’s release. VestGames is hoping for Eville to start its early access on Steam in either Q2 or Q3 of this year. Going by that, we should see it by this Fall. Another thing we learned is that the game will not be free-to-play but will be a premium title. This method has proved very fruitful for Among Us, so I’m excited to see how this title is received.

I’m sure that there’ll be more news to share about Eville as we get closer to its release on early access so stay tuned!