Roughhousing is a 4-player co-op horror-comedy game set in a 1970s grindhouse aesthetic. Players control teenagers who break into haunted locations to vandalize the environment, loot valuables, and attempt to escape alive. The game combines physics-based environmental destruction with deduction and betrayal mechanics across three main pillars: Destruction: Players earn experience points by causing creative, chained, and spectacular damage to the environment, such as smashing furniture and setting fires. Deduction: Instead of passively gathering evidence, players actively summon entities through specific reckless actions. Players must deduce which combination of behaviors triggers rare entities to fill out the "Spectredex"—a collection-by-summoning bestiary featuring a deterministic gate with a probabilistic unlock system. Deception: Players can deliberately sabotage their teammates by crafting and distributing identical, tainted items (such as rigged cigarettes or spiked drinks). The game features a gritty, retro visual style influenced by 1970s exploitation cinema, utilizing crushed shadows, tungsten lighting, and period-accurate grime.
It’s 1973 and you and your friends aren’t just looking for fun, you are danger addicted. You actively seek out haunted sites in order to summon evil spirits for the adrenaline rush. Gus, the gas station attendant, buys the loot you find, gives you new houses to explore (and destroy) and he might just know all the lore you really covet on summoning the most difficult entities - for a price. Of course, this lore is also present in the houses you explore but finding them is not easy. Armed with bats, clubs, sledgehammers and even guitars you dismantle these houses in search for Legendary Plaques with the knowledge so valuable to you. And don’t forget to pick up elicit substances from Gus as well - not only are they for fun but you can spike your friend’s beer with them, and they might even have some defensive abilities when taken too. 20 entities to bag and one house at the end of many in this epic stretch of chaos that holds a puzzle and story that will curdle your blood. Bag all twenty entities and get to the final home alive, and you might just make sense of all this chaos - at the risk of losing all of your sanity.