10 October 2024

Deceive Inc. has been out for about 3 weeks (on Steam) and like a lot of people, I haven’t been able to put it down. If you never heard of Deceive Inc., is a FPS Spy vs Spy PVP stealth game, that can be very addictive but super confusing for beginners. 

To start things up, the main objective of the game is to break into a vault, collect the briefcase, and safely extract from one of three different points scattered on the map. That or you can try to shoot everyone else and be the last person standing. 

For now, there are 2 different ways to play this game, the solo, and the team mode, but both of them play very similarly, as they share the same exact goal, safely extract with the briefcase.

Three phases 

Every game mode is breakdown into different phases, Insertion, Infiltration, and Extraction.  

In the Insertion phase, you and/or the enemy players need to disable three Vault Terminals. 

Once all three Vault Terminals are disabled, the second phase, Infiltration, kicks in. Essentially, everyone can break into the Vault and pick up the briefcase. There are usually three different entrances to the Vault, but in the first area, you will need to disguise as a guard, who is presented by the blue color, to not be detected. The second area is the technicians’ room, so you will need to steal a technician’s outfit to go undetected. The final room contains the briefcase itself and right on top of the door you can see a light, if it’s green it means that no other spy is inside, if it’s red it means that someone is already in. To open this door you will either need 10 Intel Points or a VIP gold key card. 

Once someone has the briefcase, everyone moves to the final phase, the Extraction. Every 10 seconds a ping will be sent out to everyone, showing where the holder of the briefcase is located. While running with it, the intervals between the pings are shorter. Also, In this phase, I highly recommend changing outfits, since the technicians are only located close to the room that I previously mentioned.  

Field Upgrades (perks)

  • How to collect them

You can start collecting your perks in the first phase. These perks are divided into five colors:

Grey perk, that can be found in grey safes around common parts of the map with no need to open any colored door.

Green perk, that is found in the Staff’s Room. 

Blue perk, is in the Guards’ Room. 

As for the Purple perk, these can be found in the Purple Room. This room is always one room deeper into the Guards Room, so it’s better to make sure that you either have Enough intel points to open up both doors, or have both keys to open the doors. It can also be found during the infiltration phase in the Technicians’ zone.

Golden perk, is the strongest perk of them all, it can be obtained by disabling a vault terminal, if they are there since there are Vault Rooms that contain no perk at all, or inside the room with the suitcase.

These perks can also be obtained by defeating other players and collecting their loot.

  • How they work

Even though there isn’t much variety where to choose from, perks can somehow be shaped to the player’s and characters’ playstyle. Under the “Field Upgrades” tab you can find your Decks with the different perks. Each color of perk is attached to a different percentage of the same perk, being the Golden Perk the one with a higher percentage.

How to get Intel Points 

Intel Points are the match’s main currency and can be spent to open colored doors. These points can be obtained by hacking electronic devices, just like computers or phones, scattered all around the map.

How to obtain the key cards to open doors?

Just like Intel Points, these key cards can be obtained randomly on the map, on top of tables, on the balcony, or even inside the drawers and emits a “shining” sound. So pay close attention to every single corner of the map. Once you collected a key card you can open all the doors that correspond with the same color as the key card that you have, without spending any Intel Points.

Using different disguises

Yes, you can open the door with the corresponding key card, but you will alert staff members or guards of your presence if you are not using the proper outfit. 

VIP can enter anywhere, Guards can enter both guard rooms and staff rooms, and Staff can only enter staff rooms.

But what’s the catch here? Every NPC has its different actions, they can be subtle, but if you pay close attention to them, you can easily spot an agent undercover. To start, none of the NPCs jump, so use it as a last resort to run away, or whenever you’re sure there’s no one around. You can see green staff members opening drawers, in fact, they are the only NPC that perform this action. This doesn’t mean that you can’t open drawers disguised as any other NPC, but try to be subtle while doing so. The guards will stand against walls and can also aim their guns, and overall, this is probably the most useful disguise.

Combat

You can use your trusty weapon, which will be different from spy to spy, every time that you want, but if you do so, you will get out of your disguise. In this situation, even the guards will start attacking you, and of course, the players can hear the shots and also converge into your position. After you dealt with the enemy spy you need to get back to your disguise and for that, you need to hide from the guards for a brief seconds.

Abilities 

Every spy has their different special abilities, that adapt to different playstyles. There are some that help the player in the moment of collecting information about other players, others in a more offensive, like applying debuffs on the enemy or defensive aspect of the combat, like a shield aura for instance.

They all share a common ability while holding the briefcase which is spotting the enemies in a certain range by spending Intel Points. 

Agent Progression


Each agent has a progressions tier that can go up to level 10, in which, every tier grants a different aspect that can be a new ability or a weapon Mod.