Deceiver is a 'philosophical shooter' that lets you shoot drones through enemies

Deceiver has an inviting premise: "explore a vast cyberpunk city. Shoot things in the face. Question your basic beliefs." The philosophical aspect isn't explored in the trailer above, but you do get to see a player piloting some dangerous drones around the vector-rendered city.

The city is largely empty because the world is about to end, and everyone with enough money to catch a bus offworld has done so. According to Deceiver's Steam page, you're battling other players to unlock terminals so you can gather escape funds and murder the competition at the same time.

I like the look of the drone combat, and a recent visit to Watch Dogs 2 has made me excited to pilot gadgets in more game worlds. In Deceiver you can launch your drone through enemies as you hop between walls and ceilings. I love the way it looks as well. There are some very satisfying gifs on the official site, where you can also sign up for access to a future demo. The final game will have a four-hour story campaign and up to 12-player multiplayer spread across eight maps and four game modes.

Deceiver is due out some time in 2019. We'll keep an eye on it.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.