I never really outgrew hide-and-seek. Thankfully I have kids who give me an excuse to continue playing it. The thrill of evading detection is fun in real life, and it’s probably a big part of why I love stealth games, too. In Midnight Murder Club (MMC), the upcoming game from Velan Studios (Knockout City, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit), stealth is a huge part of the experience. But because of proximity chat, this team-based PvP first-person shooter is routinely hilarious and chaotic. I recently got to participate in the game’s first alpha, which makes these my early impressions and not indicative of the final game which is maybe months away from launch. But the proof-of-concept is immediately obvious, and I’m excited to see how it progresses.
Midnight Murder Club arms everyone in its six-player rounds with a flashlight and a revolver, then sets them off to do one of a number of tasks depending on the mode. Free-for-all and team deathmatch are there of course, but so too are more uncommon modes, like a heist gametype in which players must pilfer valuables out of locked vaults, then bank them in a central hub before it locks. Another mode pits two players against four, which seems like it would spell doom for the smaller group. However, there is an advantage in being a smaller team, as you can be very hard to find in the game’s huge Wormwood Manor.
Midnight Murder Club has an elegance to it. The ritzy mansion feels like you’re living in a version of the Clue board game, only everyone has the murder weapon. This is a novel idea on its own, but it’s made better by how the game is played in total darkness except for where flashlights are pointing. This means you must be mindful of where and when you illuminate your path ahead–you may give up your location if anyone happens to be crouched silently in a corner nearby. Even shooting comes with a similar consequence, as a red trail is briefly left behind when you fire any bullet, making its trajectory visible to enemies.
But the best feature of MMC, though simple in its application, has an outsized benefit to the game. While the game’s moody silence can betray your location when you’re cracking a vault, running, or opening a creaky door, nothing is as damning as proximity chat. Though it might seem simple to avoid its pitfalls, communication is key in MMC, meaning you often have no choice but to fall victim to its hilarious consequences. In my time with the alpha, I witnessed players whispering strategies, as well as others who would loudly disrupt the quiet like a student who enters a study hall blaring music. Good-natured trash talk was rampant, as well, as the few players who got into the alpha were the very first outside of the studio to experiment with the game and seemed excited to be there.
There’s something so funny, in an Of Mice and Men sort of way, about trying to quietly tell your teammate what you plan to do when, unbeknownst to you, an enemy player may be tip-toeing nearby and getting the drop on you in total darkness. And once a round does open itself up to chaos–when the jig is up and you know you’re in a shootout with another team–the proximity chat groups well with the game’s limited ammo reserves, short time-to-kill, and the element of friendly fire. In one of my rounds, a player tried to sell my team on the idea that he had us pinned down, before it soon became obvious he was all out of ammo anyway.
On a different occasion, I purposely made my presence known on the other side of a door, but then merely cracked it open to toss in a blinding light grenade. It’s fun to announce yourself like that, then immediately upend the enemies’ knee-jerk reaction with an added variable. At other times, hearing an enemy voice in the pitch-blackness creates a fun tension–do I spam gunfire and hope I land a shot? Do I run and hide? Or maybe do I just yell back at them and see what happens next? Emergent moments like this feel like they will decorate each round of MMC when it launches later this year.
In other games, proximity chat can be liable to turn toxic–my brother has told me horror stories from his time spent in Call of Duty since the feature was added there, and I suspect it’s why the feature still isn’t in Fortnite, where the audience skews younger. Certainly, more players down the line can mean proximity chat may bring such a can of worms for MMC, too, but my hope is the game’s lighthearted vibes help its community recognize that it’s okay to cut loose and be silly without needing to become hazardous to others’ ears. It’s also true that some players may choose to circumvent the wrinkle of proximity chat by jumping into a private voice chat, but I hope many stay put in the game’s native voice channel. Communication is not just strategic in Midnight Murder Club; it’s also a chaos generator.
Midnight Murder Club is due out this fall on PC. You can check out its Steam page, or join the studio’s Discord to stay on top of future play sessions.
