Velan Studios has released Midnight Murder Club into early access, their dark room party game twist on a first person shooter now available for PS5 and PC.
The game comes in at $19.99 / £15.99, but also has a generous Guest Pass, allowing an owner of the game to bring in a full lobby of buddies using a free Guest Pass version of the game. As a multiplayer game being published by PlayStation, players will require a free PSN account on PC, and an active PS Plus subscription to play on PS5.
Midnight Murder Club takes the first person shooter and drops it into the pitch-black rooms of Wormwood Manor. Up to six players enter this blacked-out arena with just a revolver and a flashlight, trying to figure out where the other players are from the sound of their movement, flickers of light and sparing use of the flashlight. This could find a niche within the social deduction genre, and could be a hit with Twitch streamer groups because of this.
There’s five game modes in the game as of its early access launch, as described by Velan Studios:
- Free-for-All – Six brave souls enter the mansion, and the player with the most kills when time runs out prevails among the rest.
- Thief in the Night – Three fearless teams of two scour the mansion for valuable skulls to deposit into a vault. When the last vault closes, the team with the most value accumulated wins.
- Team Deathmatch – Kill-or-be-killed with your team in a murderous stand-off.
- Head Hunters – Two friends become foes as they hunt the remaining four players as they try to find and burn three hidden demonic totems in the haunting halls.
- New Game Mode: Wildcards – Valiant attendees will play cards from their collection that change the rules for everyone in-game in wild new ways! From hijacking the toys that appear in vendors, to giving everyone super speed, to exploding into flames when you die—use these cards to show your wild side! Then, when the dust settles and the match is over, you’ll be gifted brand new cards to add to your collection giving you even more ways to change the game.
One of the best things about this release is how Velan is opening the door to as many players as possible. Only one person needs to buy and own the game in order to host a full lobby, thanks to the free Guest Pass version of the game. It’s a similar concept to Split Fiction’s Friends Pass, or games with DLC that allows DLC-havers to invite DLC-have-nots.
Beyond that, Midnight Murder Club has full cross-play and cross-progression.
Velan has also laid out what can be expected through Early Access with a dev diary roadmap:
A new PvE mode is planned to release this spring, for example, while the summer will see more Toys added, as well as custom game modes. All of this is subject to change, though, depending on how the game’s community grows and feeds back on what they like and want more of in the game.
With this game Velan Studios is establishing a track record of cooking up new and inventive multiplayer games. A few years ago they launched Knockout City, a quirky riff on dodgeball that was rather fun and vibrant, but sadly didn’t quite find its audience under the EA Originals publishing arm, and couldn’t recover after going independent and free-to-play, shutting down in 2023. Here’s hoping Midnight Murder Club strikes a cord with more people!
Source: press release
