Picture four feds seated around a table. Each of them selects a gun, a knife or a bomb. One of them isn’t telling the truth, and just one will make it out alive.
That is the premise behind Gun Knife Bomb, a four-player horror title from Luke Piazza, who previously worked on Five Nights at Freddy’s and co-founded XCathedra Games. Built for two to four players, the game describes itself as a “deadly game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Its tagline is even more blunt: “Four feds enter, only one leaves.”
Anyone who has watched a board game night end a friendship will understand the hook right away.
Deception at the heart of it
At the start of each round, players pick one of the three weapons from the title and then face off against another person at the table. Victory depends on talking your way through, bluffing, cheating and blowing your rivals away.
Getting eliminated doesn’t mean you’re done, either. Fallen players return as a disembodied voice and can keep feeding lies to the living from the afterlife. (Expect your friends to be thrilled.)
Weapons are just one layer. Gear such as headphones and speech jammers controls who can hear what, which can turn a negotiation upside down partway through a round. The studio has dubbed this “Social Chaos,” and it’s what shapes the outcome of every match.
Where Buckshot Roulette and WarGames collide
The game’s visual identity pulls from a recent indie success and from Cold War-era paranoia. Piazza explained his influences in detail.
“I’d say our biggest inspiration for both the gameplay and visuals comes from the table-based horror party game Buckshot Roulette, particularly its gritty PSX-inspired aesthetic. We also drew heavily from the Cold War and films like WarGames to capture that tense, oppressive war-room atmosphere felt throughout the game. More than anything, we want players to look forward to the social chaos,” Piazza said.
The pairing fits. Buckshot Roulette showed how much tension can be squeezed out of one table and a handful of props, while WarGames lends the bunker atmosphere: low lighting, enormous stakes and zero trust between anyone in the room.
Made for playing with friends
Horror fans tend to fall into two groups. Some prefer watching a frightening film by themselves with the lights off; others would rather walk through a haunted house with friends shrieking beside them. Gun Knife Bomb belongs firmly to the latter group, and it seems purpose-built for streamers who want their co-stars shouting at one another.
The developers have the résumé to back it up. XCathedra Games consists of industry veterans, IGF award nominees and former Five Nights and Fears to Fathom developers, and the studio concentrates on high-quality atmospheric horror. Gun Knife Bomb also reached the finals of the 2026 BigMode Game Jam.
An announcement trailer has already been released, and players can wishlist the game on Steam now. XCathedra is sharing updates on X as well.
It’s all about pointing fingers
Piazza sees the weapons and the retro presentation as mere groundwork. The thing he’s really after is the instant when everything at the table collapses.
“Gun Knife Bomb is about bluffing, cheating, betraying your friends, and trying to outsmart each other, all while knowing that someone at the table might be lying to your face. Our hope is that players walk away with those hilarious, memorable moments where everyone is screaming, laughing, and blaming each other for what the heck just happened,” Piazza said.