Midnight Murder Club Review (PC)
Summary: Midnight Murder Club is an original, fun party game with a compelling concept and price, marred by duds of gamemodes and quality of life issues that take away from the experience, but do not ruin it.
4.1
Party time!
When Midnight Murder Club originally came across my store page, over a year ago, I had the chance to check out a demo and was invested towards its potential since then. In an era of genres like Battle Royale or Social Deduction games being reinvented or overdone over and over, I was surprised at the fact that a Free for All Deathmatch game like the ones of old managed to be so original. This made more sense to me when noticing that its developer, Velan studios, made original and fun concepts and games in the past, like Fighting Game melee Battle Royale Knockout City, which was unfortunately shut down a little while back.
Midnight Murder Club is a party game for up to 6 players, where you wander through darkness armed with just a flashlight and gun. Without a flashlight the mansion is pitch-black. Your only other light source would be the bullets you fire. It makes for a compelling core game design. Feel like turning off your flashlight and wandering through the darkness? Good luck finding your way. You’ll have to literally feel out the walls like a blind person – because you are. Given the fact that there is proximity voice chat, you could sneak around and try and find folks based on the direction of their voice – or the gunfights they are finding themselves in in chaotic darkness. It was a surprisingly original and fun core concept and something I truly enjoyed playing in the demo.
With the full release out there, though, flaws have presented themselves. Midnight Murder Club launched with several new modes, ones I have all tried out, and which felt like they actively sabotaged the core gameplay experience. There is the Wildcards mode which lets all 6 players choose from a selection of modifiers to be active in the match. Problem is, all 6 modifiers don’t activate randomly throughout the match, or one by one, they are all active all at the same time during the entirety of the match. And they’re not all that fun. They also feel like they don’t fit the sneaking around, using darkness as a cover concept and just creating a chaotic and not so fun mess. It feels iffy to complain about this, given this specific mode was added after community feedback, but it is simply not for me.
There is also a PVE mode, which lets you and up to 2 friends do challenges, find items, and try and escape the mansion after doing some missions. This also was no fun when trying it out, requiring you to find objects in absolute darkness with no sense of where to go. Given the game’s low player count or a lack of friends, certain modes (but only few) like the Wildcards mode let you play with bots, but they were seemingly unaffected by darkness and had some precise aim. This concept is really one to play with humans, not bots. Another quality of life feature is an option to scramble players who are not your friends’ mics, so you cannot hear what they are saying if you don’t wish to be privy to whatever a random group of strangers may be talking about, and just stick with the fact they’ll be making noise. But the Scramble feature turns random microphones into an absolute pain for the ears. I’d rather just hear other players over the low quality noise this feature presents.
Lastly, the full release of Midnight Murder Club requires you to sign in with a PSN account, with all the issues that brings. PSN is not available in every country, and its implementation here seems to block certain folks from being able to play the game in the first place. It is a weird requirement for a small, Gmod like party game that unfortunately robs plenty of people from experiencing the game in the first place.
To end on a good note, I’d like to say that Midnight Murder Club at its core is a game made with passion. Certain game modes or quality of life features may not have worked out, but throughout development I’ve been able to witness that the developers made changes and adjustments out of a genuine want to make the best game they could according to community feedback. When purchasing the game, you are allowed to invite up to 5 other friends to play with you – for free! Thanks to a Guest pass system that *does* work. There is no time limit on this Guest pass, so you can play unlimited party games with your friends. And the core experience is still as solid as it was a year ago. The game’s demo is also still available for you to check out the core experience, before spending any money.
If you’re looking for a fun party game to play with friends for a few nights, or something to come back to over the months, then look no further than Midnight Murder Club. But if you’re looking to play and progress in something on the daily, the, the game might not be for you.
Midnight Murder Club is now available on PC and PS5, with full Cross-Play between the two.
About the Author
Lander Van Poucke Lander is a passionate gamer from Belgium with a flair for the dramatic. Valuing storytelling & narrtive in games, he favours single-player games, RPG's & fighting games for their lore and vast character rosters.
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