First Class Trouble – Preview

Games like Town of Salem and Among Us have gained a lot of popularity over the last years. These multiplayer deduction-based experiences often result in a lot of laughs and have a certain aspect where each match can go in every possible direction. Even when playing your cards right, you might end up dead before the first round is over. Even though this might be frustrating for some, it’s also part of these games’ charm, as well as what makes them hilarious at times. We now had the opportunity to dive into First Class Trouble, which still has a few rough edges but shows great potential.

We did mention Town of Salem in the introduction, simply because you either try and murder the townsfolk or try to find the murderer as a member of the community. This is somewhat the same in Among Us, where you must decipher who is sabotaging your life-support, or, of course, murder those who are just doing their jobs on a space station. First Class Trouble is very similar to the latter, albeit more complex and with a smaller group. In FCT you’ll be playing sessions with six people, where four are just Residents of a spaceship that is seemingly turning against its own inhabitants. The other two will be Personoids, human-like androids, who will try to murder the residents at all costs. Residents have to shut down the AI network below deck to be victorious, or to conclude that all Personoids have been deactivated. Personoids just have to murder those Residents in sight, but are limited in their murderous activities.

Each game of First Class Trouble consists of three areas; if you survive long enough. You’ll start in your own private quarters, with another player starting in the quarters across the hall. The immediate thrill starts as you will have to work together to access the storage room for some basic supplies. As the game has proximity-based voice chat, you’ll have to communicate with those around you, and also give instructions and clues on what they have to do. To open doors, you’ll have to explain what symbol they have to press and vice versa. Fixing broken doors or certain other items require you to complete reflex-based mini-games. Failing to communicate or failing one of these activities may already result in the group raising suspicion as to what your role may be. Even if you’re a goodie-two-shoes Resident, the group may think you are a Personoid and ultimately kill you.

Unlike Among Us the game lets normal players kill others as well, albeit if they work together. Another player must grab a suspect in this scenario and hold him down, allowing another player to snap his or her neck. Actions are not done immediately in this game and have a small bar to fill. This may allow other players to interfere or prevent certain actions. Of course, in between different areas players can also vote to blast a player into outer space, or even vote that all Personoids are gone, and if that is correct, the Residents will immediately win. If they vote that all Personoids are gone, but they aren’t, the Personoids will win.

The entire gameplay loop is very entertaining and it’s fun to achieve new goals or to just sneak around and stealthily win a match as a Personoid. Even with hardly any different maps present in the game, there is still a lot to explore, and the vintage and classic look of everything also adds to the game’s atmosphere. While not immediately the same thing, it feels similar to Bioshock where retro items are combined with futuristic technology.

Everything in the game works quite fine, but it does have a higher learning curve than Among Us. Some things are not always clear as to how they should be approached, and the controls sometimes feel a bit wonky. More than often when grabbing or trying to kill someone the game does not respond perfectly. We also encountered some issues with group queuing, where sometimes players in our party were not able to join the same matches as the rest of the group. This was often a bit annoying, as for this game you probably turn off Discord, because of the proximity voice chat system. When not on Discord, you cannot let the other players know in case you did not make it into their match. Nonetheless, we reckon this would be a bug that is easily fixed by just letting the group join as one chunk, rather than in sequence. Update: we have not encountered this bug anymore during our last gaming sessions. We’re not sure if it’s completely fixed, however.

First Class Trouble is a lot of fun, but it’s the other players you end up with that dictate the flow of the game. You might end up with a group of solo players who will look at things rationally, but you might end up with a small group of friends who just fuck about and cuss and try to be total dicks. We reckon that for this reason our site was given a set of keys to allow a full party of people to play, but even so, we wanted to see how the community was as well. Sometimes you might even also end up with people who do not communicate or do not speak a language you understand.

Conclusion

First Class Trouble is a very entertaining and engaging party/deduction game. As mentioned before, the experience depends heavily on who you end up with during a match, but even so, the overall gameplay loop is very enjoyable and there’s a learning curve that proves to be rewarding when you invest time in the game. We’d love to see more content for the final build, but as for now, the game is already quite polished, outside of a few smaller bugs and wonky controls. Nonetheless, if you want something fairly challenging in the same vein as Among Us, you cannot go wrong with this one. Add some friends to the equation, and you have a lot of fun gaming sessions in store for your gaming evenings.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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