Backstab Party launches at ¥17.69 and friendships are already breaking

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Backstab Party, the retro horror party game for 2 to 8 players, is now officially available on Steam, with both public servers and private rooms. According to the game's official pitch, there are "no teammates, only survivors and corpses," and that is the hook: friends enter a run of lethal mini-games, and only one player makes it out alive.

This is not the kind of party game built around cooperation or polite teamwork. Backstab Party treats friendship as another hazard, then asks who shoves first. You may think you are clearing a challenge together, only for someone to decide the safest route is through you and into the nearest trap.

The structure is simple: each round serves up another twisted mini-game. Every mini-game comes with its own deadly rules and elimination methods. One round might have you dodging blades; another asks you to fight for position, avoid traps, and read a friend's movement a little too closely.

That rhythm makes it feel like a variety-show elimination contest, except the punishment is not embarrassment or a splash of water. It is instant elimination. The appeal is blunt: survive the round, read the room, and accept that the person laughing in voice chat may already be lining up your exit.

The nastiest part is not the machinery. It is what the game lets players do to each other. Backstab Party explicitly leans into survival and betrayal. You can play it straight and dodge hazards on your own, or you can shove a friend into danger and call it strategy. For a party lobby, that is exactly the sort of design that creates shouting, accusations, and the kind of chaos people immediately want to clip.

The lobby setup helps too. With support for 2 to 8 players, plus public servers and private rooms, it should be easy to get a group moving. It can work as a closed-room betrayal game for friends, or as a messier public lobby where nobody has much reason to trust a stranger.

Visually, the game uses low-poly arenas and rough PSX-era textures. It is not trying to scare players through high-end character models or polished cinematic horror. Instead, it uses retro horror atmosphere, hard-edged figures, and bloody spectacle to carry the tone. It looks deliberately crude rather than technically refined, and that roughness fits the format.

There is a small progression angle as well: players can unlock wilder outfits by clearing difficult in-game challenges. That is a smart fit for a game built around social chaos, because half the fun of this kind of lobby is watching an absurd-looking character pull off a shameless betrayal.

As a purchase, the pitch is straightforward. If you enjoy games where friends sabotage each other, Backstab Party is clearly aimed at you. The Steam launch price is 17.69 yuan, with a 10% discount during the first two weeks, keeping it firmly in impulse-buy territory.

If you are looking for serious storytelling or long-term character growth, this probably is not what you are here for. But if you want a game that can make a voice channel erupt within minutes, the premise is doing its job.

It also lands in a friendly moment for horror party games. Horror party games travel well through streams and short videos right now: the simpler the rules and the more direct the betrayal, the easier it is to produce memorable moments. Backstab Party seems built for that. It turns "be the last one alive" into a joke, a grudge, and probably a voice-chat argument about conscience.