Demo showcases opening act of I Want to Play the Villain!

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Theater-themed deduction puzzler from the creators of Boxville coming early next year to PC and consoles

Actors! What a bunch of divas, the lot of 'em... Okay, whether that's true or not in real life, it'll be up to you to cater to your troupe's very particular whims as the theatrical director in Triomatica Games' charming upcoming puzzle game, I Want to Play the Villain!

There's no overall story to uncover in this game. Instead, there's a series of stage-play-within-a-game tales for you to follow and bring to fruition. As the unseen director, you are in charge of putting on the perfect theater performance – or at least a functional one – but your actors want a say in the matter too. Each thespian has "their own wishes, ambitions, fears, and favorite roles," and it's up to you to find just the right fit for the right roles. For the show to go on, you may need to "give an actor their dream role, pair them with the right partner, or keep them away from situations they fear." Fortunately, you have a number of tricks up your sleeve to help pull it off.

I Want to Play the Villain! is a very different sort of title than the Ukrainian developer's acclaimed Boxville series. In fact, it's a stretch to call it an "adventure game" at all, as you never move and must simply rearrange the pieces to suit the many scenarios. Still, it's a puzzly deduction experience in which every performance promises to be different, each with its own "setting, characters, mechanics, and story." Whether it's royal drama at court or magicians competing for dominance, it's your job to drag-and-drop the correct actors into the correct costumed avatars on stage to make everyone happy. 

That soon becomes easier said than done, as you'll have to balance actors' one or more needs and wishes like "I am claustrophobic" or "I want to play a heartbroken character" with various assigned roles, such as Princess, Engineer, Maid, Rival – and of course, Villain. Cast just "one wrong role and the show falls apart." The modular story snippets for each scene contain clues as well, such as "The king returned from his travels and found an identical impostor in the castle." But these too can be variable, allowing you to switch between alternate versions to accommodate your actors' demands. With up to eight-plus roles to cast per level, potentially multiple different scene descriptions to choose from, and ever-increasing complexity to the puzzle scenarios, there are too many options to simply brute-force your way to the solutions, requiring you to pay careful attention to every detail provided. (With a hint button available to steer you in the right direction, if necessary.)
 
The full version of I Want to Play the Villain! should be ready sometime in the first quarter of 2027 for PC, consoles and mobile devices. In the meantime, you can try out the playable demo on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux, which contains the first "18 unique challenges to overcome."