It's been almost three years. I finally collected the energy to write a few words about @DeceiverGame. Lots more to unpack, but this is a start. Thread

Hey folks! I do pop on here every once in a while! I ran out of money and got burned out on game development. Thank you for your kind words and support for the game. I can't tell you how fun it was to see people get so passionate about it

Unfortunately the game is canceled. Since it's all over now, let me explain the original idea and why it was called Deceiver.

It's a linear story campaign where, in order to advance through each level, you must defeat another online player. Everyone claws their way up the rankings to get to the end of the campaign.

It's a cyberpunk dystopia where the world is ending and everyone is fighting over resources to escape the planet. You are a woman whose hands have been brutally replaced with metal claws.

You explore a ravaged city in first-person view, jumping and climbing to scrounge for resources. Every time a player beats the game, everyone else gets a notification, and you can look up and see a rocket ship ascending. They've escaped.

You meet a woman named Seven who helps you. Seven believes the calamity threatening the planet is actually man-made and not a natural disaster.

In each area you explore, there is a control panel you can enter, which allows you to control a combat drone. This is where you fight other players to steal their resources. You never actually see their characters face-to-face, you fight by remote control.

Seven collects evidence that the calamity was planned. As you unlock new areas, save up money, and get closer to the mountain where you can buy your rocket launch to freedom, you uncover more of the conspiracy.

Seven discovers the calamity isn't real at all, then that she isn't real, she's an AI.

Finally, you realize this whole experience hasn't been real: the players you defeated to reach the end of the game were actually bots with fake usernames.

As the planet starts to fall apart, you can choose either to stay, or take your rocket ship. Seven may come with you depending on your choices. Roll credits!

Pretty early on, I realized that to complete the illusion, the game would have to be marked "Multiplayer" on Steam. And then I realized, selling it as a multiplayer game when it didn't actually have multiplayer would result in a lot of backlash.

So I decided, the campaign would have "fake" multiplayer, and once you beat it, it would unlock the "real" multiplayer mode.

Unfortunately the "real" multiplayer mode became so complex that I could no longer write an AI that could convincingly pass as a human player. It would have required state-of-the-art machine learning.

In short, by the end the project grew ambitious enough to challenge a 150-person development team, and I was just one person. It was death by scope creep.

Thanks for reading!

Looking back, this game was totally a @PeterMolydeux pitch