Greetings and Salutations
Dear Wolves and Lambs,
This is the KILLER INN Team again.
As you may have seen, we have announced the schedule for the second closed beta test (CBT2), and day by day, it draws nearer.
We will be publishing full patch notes—including a detailed list of all updates—at a later date. In the meantime, here is an overview of the key changes coming in CBT2. Please note that all of these are still under development and are subject to change.
Game Design Revamps
💠 Safe Zones
When you enter a staff area, known as a Safe Zone, you will now be completely invulnerable for 30 seconds. During this time, no one can harm you—no damage, no grapples, no pickpocketing.
However, although you are invulnerable, you also cannot perform any hostile actions yourself. You can’t swing axes or crowbars, set traps, or even aim a gun. In short, it’s like a complete ceasefire.
In response to the problem from the last beta where Safe Zones became killing sprees for Wolves, we chose not to strengthen penalties against Wolves who violated them. Instead, our first step is to make Safe Zones truly safe. We felt that simply making the punishment harsher would still leave many (especially new) players in the frustrating position of being killed instantly in what should be a safe area, before they have even had the chance to learn the ropes.
Once your period of invulnerability ends, you will be able to attack again. We’re looking forward to seeing what new mind games and strategies may ensue!
While in the Safe Zone, the minimap is highlighted in yellow, and 30-second countdown is activated indicating the duration of the Safe Zone Invincibility.
💠 Retaliation Kills: Who Should Be Punished?
One of the biggest sources of frustration during the last beta was players feeling they were being punished for fighting back after being attacked first. In CBT2, the rules have been revised to allow retaliation kills. If you are attacked and strike back, you will not be turned to stone with a Bad Guess Penalty.
💠 Wolves Attacking Other Wolves
If a Wolf attempts to kill another Wolf, it will now be treated as a betrayal and punished accordingly. Just like friendly fire within the Lambs, the offender will be turned to stone and eliminated.
Previously, even if a Wolf attacked another Wolf, their HP could never be reduced to zero, meaning Wolves were technically unable to kill each other. However, the heavy damage inflicted could still put the victim at a severe disadvantage. This led to griefing by a subset of players, where Wolves would deliberately harass their own teammates.
To address this, we’ve introduced the aforementioned penalty, meaning the same rule now applies to both teams.
💠 Other Changes
Guardians no longer regenerate HP, and we have more than doubled their base HP. The goal was to make it easier to reach the harbor, and also allow for weapons without upgrades to make an impact in a guardian battle.
Weapons and armor can no longer be stolen through pickpocketing. Note: The Thief, who has the Quick Hands passive ability, is still able to steal weapons and armor from other players.
Players can no longer steal items from another player's chest for a brief period during and after opening it.
New Features
💠 Custom Lobbies / Private Matches (alpha)
You can now host your own custom lobbies or join those hosted by other players. In the previous beta, if you wanted to play with specific people, the only option was to form a party of up to four players and be placed on the same team. With custom lobbies, you and your friends can all join the same match—then lie, deceive, and betray each other to your hearts’ content.
Hosts can choose to open their lobbies to the public or set them to private and share the lobby ID with specific friends. You can even start with 10 friends in a custom lobby and then switch it to public to fill the remaining slots.
You can limit the number of participants as well. In fact, by setting the player count to just two, you can create a simple 1 on 1 deathmatch!
For CBT2, only the core functionality of custom lobbies will be available, but we have plans to expand them further and welcome your feedback on what features you would like to see!
💠 Training Mode (alpha)
A training mode has been added, allowing you to explore the map and practice the controls without other players present. In CBT2, you will be able to accept quests and try out characters, weapons, and items. Features such as playing against bots for combat practice and damage testing are not yet included, which is why this version is considered an alpha.
💠 Skins
You can now set skins to change the appearance of your character. As a preview, in CBT2 each character will have one skin available.
💠 Banners (Nameplates)
You can now personalize your banner (nameplate), which will appear in the player list, on death panels, and elsewhere. CBT2 includes around 30 different banner designs to choose from.
Game Rebalancing
The main focus of this update is to reduce the excessive tension (and risk of death) in the early stage of a match and instead create a greater sense of security and making that part of the game feel survivable. To that end, we have made sweeping adjustments, starting with doubling players’ base HP. We have made some revisions to the balance on gear. Most changes were made to compensate for the increased base HP, but the relative strength of certain firearms and other gear has also been tweaked. And yes, that includes nerfing the crowbar, which in the last beta was far too lethal (at least, in more ways than intended) for how easily it could be obtained. We have also adjusted item prices and the number of tokens required to open different chests.
Rather than making players to fear death from the very start of a match, this new balancing is designed to ease you in more gradually. We will continue to fine-tune the game so that early-game encounters are calmer, with tension steadily increasing as players gear up.
These changes go beyond pure numbers. The delay between melee attacks, which was too short to effectively react to, has been increased, and it’s now possible to interrupt melee weapon combos with a grapple. This helps reduce the number of situations where the first to strike always wins.
Overall, we have increased the time-to-kill (TTK) noticeably, fixing the issue with the previous pace, where it was easy to almost get one-shotted. Combined with the Safe Zone rework, we hope these changes create natural peaks and valleys of intensity, encouraging more communication between players and enhancing the social deduction side of the game.
QOL Improvements
💠 Remapping the Controls
You can now customize the controls, whether you’re on a gamepad or keyboard & mouse. Nearly every input can be reassigned, so tailor the layout to what works best for your style and muscle memory!
💠 Elimination Screen
When you’re taken out, you will now see exactly what happened—the elimination screen shows who killed you, how they did it, and with what weapon. No more wondering, “Wait... how did I die?” You may even discover who tricked or betrayed you in the process!
💠 Improving UI Readability
We have updated the look and layout of many UI elements. Since so much can happen at once in KILLER INN, we have worked to keep notifications as compact as possible, so they don’t overwhelm the screen, while still making information easier to recognize at a glance.
💠 Player Report Feature
This is one we hope you’ll never need! But, if you do encounter abusive language or clear instances of griefing, you can now report other players directly in-game.
💠 Further Optimizations
We have continued optimizing performance so more players can enjoy a smoother experience. The improvements are many, but here’s a noticeable one: load times when starting the game or entering a match are now about 30% faster.
💠 Bug Fixes
We have addressed many bugs, prioritizing the ones with the greatest gameplay impact. Because of all your feedback, we were able to discover and fix a wide range of issues, so thank you! Even as we write this message, the dev team is hard at work squashing more of them.
In Closing
In preparation for the second closed beta test, we have made so many fixes and adjustments that it’s hard to list them all here. For the full details, please stay tuned for the patch notes, which we will post at a later date.
KILLER INN’s journey has only just begun. Our goal is to make the game’s unique blend of order and chaos the best it can possibly be, by building it hand-in-hand with the community. To that end, we would love to hear your feedback on CBT2!
Core members of the KILLER INN team are always active on its official Discord, engaging with players directly. We have even hosted community-driven events like voting on which character will appear on the next title screen. So, if you haven’t yet, we warmly invite you to join us there! And as we count down to CBT2, we’ll be sharing more updates so that the wait doesn’t feel too long. Stay tuned—and get ready!
—The KILLER INN Team