Bandit Trap launches today with 3v1 slapstick home invasions

Picomy and PM Studios have released Bandit Trap, a 3v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game where one player booby-traps a house to stop three others from robbing it. The game launched today across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

The core loop splits players into two distinct roles. Three players control a crew of bandits trying to steal ten treasures hidden throughout a suburban home. The fourth player acts as the Trapper. Before the bandits can breach the front door, the Trapper gets a two-minute head start to turn the property into a hostile environment. They can place spring-loaded fists in doorways, mount heat-seeking missiles in the hallways, and rig the furniture to explode.

Cheaper than a security system

The mechanics lean heavily into slapstick physics rather than tactical realism. The Trapper does not just place static hazards. They can actively hide inside a refrigerator to ambush the thieves or disguise themselves as a couch to launch an intruder through a window. These hazards are built into the game's "Secureniture," a fake corporate brand of weaponized home decor that makes every coffee table a potential threat.

The bandits are not helpless. They bring their own loadouts to the heist, selecting specific perks and tools before the match begins. Players can deploy remote-controlled drones to scout rooms safely or use a vacuum-style scanner to inspect multiple pieces of furniture at once. If a bandit gets knocked out by a trap, the surviving crew members can revive them. The Trapper has to finish off the entire team to secure a win.

Things escalate quickly once the match starts because the environments are fully destructible. The house rarely survives the encounter. Players can blow holes in walls to create new entry points and bypass chokepoints. They can burst water pipes to flood entire rooms. They can even freeze the floors to turn the house into an ice rink. This sends both the bandits and the Trapper sliding into hazards.

A pivot from platformers

This is a structural pivot for developer Picomy. The Dutch studio spent the last decade focused on colorful platformers and mobile games. They created the flying adventure Heroki in 2015 and the music-based platformer Monomals for Apple Arcade in 2019. They also contributed level design work to Sonic Mania alongside Headcannon and PagodaWest Games. Moving from retro platforming to a physics-driven party game is a mechanical jump, but the vibrant, cartoonish art style carries over intact.

The asymmetrical multiplayer genre is notoriously difficult to sustain. The graveyard is packed with games that died simply because they required exactly four or five players to function. Once the player base dips, finding a full lobby becomes impossible, and the game becomes unplayable.

Picomy sidestepped that problem by building the game with offline play in mind. The game includes full bot support alongside private lobbies and standard online matchmaking. You can fill empty slots with AI opponents on either side. If your regular gaming group only has three people, the computer can play the Trapper. If you want to test out new trap placements by yourself, you can load into a house against a team of AI bandits. You will never have to spend an hour in a Discord server begging a stranger to fill out your lobby.