The Zootopia Russian Roulette game is kind of a bummer to play, but it's fun to watch

Liar's Bar is a social deception game aimed at Twitch streamers or friend groups who like party games that end with a table of dead Zootopia rejects. It's basically Dogs Playing Poker as a videogame and not really much more than that. Most of the appeal seems to be watching other people play it rather than playing it yourself, and even then I think it's a little too early access to be more than a novelty at this point.

The game dropped earlier this month and has been a hit with a ton of YouTubers and streamers, which seemingly primed it to reach over 100K concurrent Steam players when the latest update released this week. It's since fallen back down to around 15K, but if you do a quick YouTube search for it there are pages of people playing it. After checking it out myself, I can see why it fell off so quickly.

You've played half of Liar's Bar the moment you load it up and see an overhead shot of a poker table sitting in the middle of a bar with dice spilling out of a cup, a loose deck of playing cards, and a revolver lying in a pool of blood dripping onto the wooden floor. Actually controlling the game doesn't reveal much more than the vibe of the menu screen. It's a sleazed up Tabletop Simulator for people who think Russian Roulette is like, so crazy, man.

Even the characters are pretty much the kind of stereotypes you'd expect for something like this. There's a doberman wearing a black tank top and a gold chain, a large rhino man in a Hawaiian shirt, and Jessica Rabbit as an actual rabbit. They each have the suggestion of backstories told through a few comic book panels in a menu, but at the table they speak like animatronics. Liar's Bar uses AI generated voices that sound either literally robotic or devoid of personality. And despite using AI, they don't have a lot to say. Once you've heard the bunny girl, Cupcake, repeat "Honey, I've got tricks, and not just up my sleeve" for the 20th time you'll wish there were actual voice actors giving these animals a modicum of personality.

None of this seems like the point, though. Liar's Bar is really just a stage for playing two bluffing games—Liar's Dice and Liar's Deck—with three other people on voice chat. You can jump straight into an open lobby or find one in a list, but because of the game's simplicity, you're better off playing with people you know. The problem is that Liar's Bar doesn't have a lot of ways for you to 'read' other players. All you have is a head to nod up and down from your first-person view. It's not like Among Us where just doing your tasks and moving your character around can reveal your intentions. The rules of the game have to prompt you with things to accuse each other of, and Liar's Bar isn't quite there yet.

Both of the games you can play are pretty simple to understand. Liar's Dice, which is based on the real game, gives everyone a set of dice to help them declare how many of each are in play. The stakes are raised every turn as each player has to declare either a higher number of dice (e.g. three threes) or a higher dice face (three fours). When someone calls liar, the dice are revealed and if they don't add up, the bluffing player has to drink poison.

Liar's Deck is similar: Players take turns announcing the cards they play (e.g. two kings) and if they're caught lying, they're forced to pick their gun up and pray the chamber is empty.

It's all rather macabre for a game made to be played with friends, especially when someone dies and you're left staring at their lifeless eyes for the rest of the game. If the tone wasn't such a bummer I might've liked the recently added devil card that forces everyone else to pull the trigger if someone calls a bluff. But Liar's Bar isn't goofy enough or chaotic enough to keep coming back to; it lives and dies on your friend group or your willingness to play with strangers.

Developer Curve Animation says it's working on new characters, modes, and rules for the games which could manage to keep it interesting for longer than a few hours. Right now, it's entertaining fodder for your favorite YouTubers and streamers to riff off each other. To me, that's the ideal way to experience this game. You kind of need a group of people willing to play up the absurdity of it to lighten the mood. Otherwise, it feels like it'll need the six months it's supposedly going to be in early access for it to grow into something worth trying to play yourself.

Liar's Bar is available right now on Steam for $6.99.