The characters of SpyParty.
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Chris Hecker’s SpyParty gets started after 8 years in development

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 30 min

Most games don’t take eight years to make. But Chris Hecker’s SpyParty is unique. With the tiniest of teams, Hecker designed and made his dream game about subtle human behavior, where a sniper tries to identify a spy at a cocktail party and shoot the spy with a single bullet.

The game launched on Thursday on Steam Early Access with all new art, 21 new animated characters, 10 art venues, and eight missions with a lot of variations. I played it with GamesBeat’s Stephanie Chan yesterday, and we took turns playing the spy, who plays a game of deception, and the sniper, who has to tap the power of perception. I think it’s pretty good.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.