If you’re a fan of multiplayer games that require you to observe the behavior of other players and figure out who is pretending to be something they’re not, then there’s an upcoming game for you to keep an eye on.
It’s called OCTOPinbs (the logo stylizes it as Octo P!nbs, that second word being “squid” reversed and flipped upside down), an action-focused social deduction game from developers Tri-Ace and Lasengle. It takes place in an alternate world where organisms evolved differently. Creatures that in our reality would be purely aquatic or terrestrial can live side-by-side in the same areas in this world. They’re capable of taking control of human-like husks and using them to walk around and live their lives.
Those lives were once peaceful. Each species was assigned a job, they worked said jobs without complaint, and had no conflict with each other. Then came the “artists,” beings capable of altering their form and blending in with other organisms. They became frustrated by the fact that everyone’s jobs were assigned based on their species and that nobody questioned it. In response, they decided to start setting fires as a form of protest.
That’s the backdrop of the game, where 3–10 players are placed in a multi-story building that’s on fire. At first glance, all players seem to be firefighters there to put out the blaze, but there’s a catch: Some players are actually artists, whose primary goal is to continue setting more fires. The firefighters are octopi, while the artists are secretly squids (hence the game’s name).
Player roles are decided at random when a new game begins, and the general gameplay loop is fairly simple: The artists set things on fire while trying to avoid detection by other players. The firefighters work to put out fires while also keeping their eyes open for any suspicious behavior.
While the general idea is pretty straightforward, artists have some tricks up their sleeves that complicate things a bit. For one, they can take on the appearance of any other player. That means they can make themselves look like a specific firefighter, then intentionally set a fire in front of other firefighters to create distrust and confusion.
Artists also have the ability to stick to walls and become transparent. So after pretending to be someone else, they can run away, stick to a wall, and evade the pursuit coming after them. They can’t stay that way permanently, though. The artists win by either filling the map’s fire gauge to 100% or eliminating all the firefighters. So they need to remain active and find a balance between setting fires, eliminating firefighters, and evading detection.
The firefighters win by either reducing the map’s fire gauge to 0% or eliminating all the artists. At this point, you’re probably wondering how “eliminating” players works. There are no timed rounds or meetings called to discuss what each player has seen; everything happens in real time.
Each player has HP, and you can attack other players with your fire hose or hatchet to reduce theirs. When someone’s HP hits zero, their body will weaken and they’ll be reduced to a slow-moving little octopus or squid covered by a helmet (pictured below). When in this form, they can be picked up and taken to a judgment box, which will eliminate them and also reveal whether they were a firefighter or an artist.
That means it’s possible for firefighters to mistakenly eliminate each other, making it more difficult to keep the fire at bay and making the artists’ job easier. It also means that even if someone has correctly identified an artist, they can fight back to eliminate the other player and keep themselves in the game.
Players who have had their HP reduced but didn’t get eliminated can replenish their health by destroying certain pieces of furniture that are marked on the map. However, if the fire spreads to the point that it consumes that furniture, it will create a flame monster that will impede the work of the firefighters. So you’ll need to be strategic about when you make use of that furniture. You don’t want to break it all too early and have no way to heal later in the game, but you also don’t want to leave it unbroken for too long and let it become a monster.
The furniture isn’t the only thing on the map you’ll need to worry about. As each game goes on, sections of the map will decay. Staircases and parts of the floor can give out, forcing you to find ways to jump between each floor to reach new fires. The number and size of floors can be adjusted depending on the number of players in each game.
That’s one of several customization options available to players. In addition to being able to change the floors, you can customize the look of your individual character, and you can choose how many artists are in each game. The developers recommend that a game with five players have two artists and a game with 10 players have four artists, but you can change the rules to increase or decrease that number, as long as there’s at least one artist.
OCTOPinbs is scheduled to launch in Spring 2026 and will be available on Steam, with the price to be announced at a later date. It will be available in several languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, German, and French. If you want to keep up with the latest news and updates, check out the game's official website, Steam page, or follow it on X / Twitter, TikTok, or Discord.
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