It feels like only yesterday that I said that Dead by Daylight had killed all competition in the 4-vs-1 online slasher genre, stomping rivals like a burly man in a hockey mask stomps kids at summer camp. Little did I know that as I was writing this, a new game was stirring in the Twitch charts, averaging nearly 30,000 concurrent views and at one point even eclipsing Dead by Daylight in viewing figures.
Propnight, from developer Fntastic, is the latest game to have a stab at that Dead by Daylight formula. Four players control a group of teenagers trying to repair several 'Propmachines' on levels set around sleepy provincial Americana (you know, where the bad shit always happens). Meanwhile, one player picks from one of several killers with their own unique abilities, and tries to do what killers do.
But there's a twist: in the spirit of classic Garry's Mod creation Prop Hunt, human players are capable of turning into pretty much any physics-based object in the level—crates, potatoes, barrels, oil drums, toy cars, you name it.
This not only means that you can, say, disguise yourself as a dinner plate on a table as the killer glides past, but you can actually fight back too. Case in point is this clip where a player saves their friend by turning into an oil drum and knocking the evil bunny-suited psycho down (before inexplicably flying 100 feet into the air).
As you can see, it's very much on the silly side, and still rather janky, but in a game where you can be a plush bunny bouncing across a moonlit courtyard while a demonic granny gives chase, perhaps a little trashiness is all in the spirit of things.
At the time of writing Propnight has over 20,000 people viewers on Twitch, down from an average of over 49,000 on Wednesday but still very much rubbing shoulders with the big boys. You can grab the game on Steam, though be warned that many players are saying that for all its potential, Propnight still has an 'Early Access' kind of feel, with lots of bugs and balancing issues that will hopefully get sorted out down the line.
