Deducto 2

Over much of the last decade, the world has gone made for social deduction games. Not everyone wants to go online and fight one another; some gamers simply want to enjoy a more mental-based gaming experience. This is most often done through using systems like social deduction, where you try to work out who is on your team and who is working against you from the inside.

One game that adds to the genre at the moment is Deducto 2. The latest work from Red Fox Studios is quite interesting, offering an intriguing social deduction experience that places you in an office environment. Can you work with your co-workers, or are you going to backstab them to move up the ladder?

Social deduction with plenty of confusion

First off, Deducto 2 is a very strange game. This game puts you in the role of an employee within a company. Your job? To work up the ladder and do anything you need to get there. This means backstabbing your colleagues (often literally) or having outrageous fights with melee weapons. It can all seem a bit like it is thrown together, with limited visuals and stodgy animations giving this a real early 2000s vibe to it.

What Deducto 2 does as well as games like Among Us, though, is it manages to make it easy to work together (until you need to strike out alone). Each team has imposters who are looking to damage the company from the inside, and you need to work with the people that you trust to see if you can work out who is to be trusted and who needs to be put out to pasture.

While Deducto 2 lacks quite a lot in terms of visuals, it is customisable enough that you can still know exactly who you are playing as. Each day brings new courses, which is fun, making sure that each game feels fresh in terms of the layout and the challenges. With the workplace-themed nature of the game, too, this changes up from the usual theme that copies Among Us’ more space-based themes.

An interesting addition to a very crowded field (7/10)

While Deducto 2 is pretty janky, it does offer something different purely due to the themes. Instead of being on a ship or at sea, you are dealing with an office. This adds a bit of extra freshness, with the chance to use all manner of office-based solutions like vents and cameras to your advantage. This makes it easier to catch those who are committing a bit of sabotage from within.

There is plenty to like about Deducto 2 and its ideas, but it does all feel a bit thrown together at the moment. There is definite appeal to the game, though, and with some extra polish to the visuals and animation it could definitely be an improvement over many social deduction games.

Pros

• Office theme offers something different in what is a very saturated market
• Teamwork is rewarded more than in some other social deduction games

Cons

• Visuals are of limited quality, resulting in janky animations and characters
• Does not really offer enough to make it stand out compared to bigger alternatives