$7.99Is The Headliners worth it?
The Headliners is worth it if…
- you have a group of friends who enjoy co-op horror nights and arguing about the round afterwards
- you like games where the funny moments come from the chaos, not a script
- you enjoy risk-and-reward loops: push deeper for a better shot, or get out alive
- you want rounds that end with stories worth telling, win or lose
- you do not mind some jank around the edges
Screenshots
Photography as a contact sport
Every journalist carries a camera, and that camera is your whole livelihood. A shot pays based on what is in it and how much of the frame it fills: explosions, monsters mid-attack, a teammate losing a leg. Zoom helps. So does terrible judgment. The instinct to raise the camera instead of running is exactly what makes a photo valuable, and it is also what gets people eaten. You decide what counts as news: a UFO, a pile of bodies, or your friend being dragged away in the background. The game scores whatever you bring back, and it has a cruel sense of what sells.
Risk, press cards and the walk back
You start with 3 press cards, and every expedition spends one. Make a headline and you earn more; fail and your career stalls. That gives each run real stakes: pushing one street deeper for a better shot, or cutting it short and getting out. The money buys better gear, which lets you push into worse neighborhoods, where the photos are better and so is everything trying to kill you. Dying can cost you equipment you spent hours earning, so the trip back to the helicopter is where the tension lives.
A city that fights back
The streets of a fallen New York are yours to search: dark alleys, abandoned buildings, hidden corners, all of it potentially front-page material and all of it dangerous. Creatures come in all sizes, from small fast things that hunt you through the streets to the kind of enormous machine you only notice when you step outside and it is standing over the block. The tone swings hard: one moment dread and narrow escapes, the next a teammate hopping back from the helicopter on one leg while everyone films it. Destruction, gore and slapstick share the same frame, which is precisely the point.
Is this game for you?
Can you play it solo?
Yes, teams run from 1 to 8 journalists, so a solo expedition is possible. But the game is built around a crew: the photos, the rescues and the disasters all get better with more people in the lobby, and playing alone skips most of what makes it fun. If you plan to play mostly solo, this is probably not your game.
What happens when you die?
You start with 3 press cards and each expedition uses one, so a failed run costs you a card. Dying can also mean losing equipment you paid for, which stings. The only way to keep going is to make headlines, earn more cards and buy better gear for the next, slightly more suicidal trip.
Is it actually scary, or just silly?
Both, and the mix is the joke. The dark streets, the creatures and the walk back to the helicopter give it real tension, and then a 500-foot machine appears over the next block and someone decides the correct response is to photograph it. The dread and the slapstick feed each other rather than canceling out.
