About Hitman Roulette #1 - The Basics
What is Hitman Roulette anyway?
This is part 1 of 3 of an introduction to Hitman Roulette. See also Part 2: Resources and Part 3: The community.
Welcome to Hitman Roulette! Confused about a match you watched, a conversation you read, or just want to get familiar with this game mode? The following three posts should help anyone to get started on their way to becoming a roulette follower or even competitor.
Roulette basics
Hitman is a stealth game franchise created by Danish developer IO Interactive. Set in an open world environment and played primarily from a third-person perspective, the core objective of Hitman is to kill an assigned target or targets. Hitman Roulette focuses on the latest entry of the series, Hitman: World of Assassination, due to the size and depth of its maps.
By default, Hitman Roulette is played on any of the 19 maps of the World of Assassination story destinations, from Paris (The Showstopper) all the way to Mendoza (Farewell) and Ambrose Island (Shadows in the Water)1.
The centerpiece of every roulette competition or similar activity is called a roulette spin. A spin is generated by a randomiser (like roulette.hitmaps.com), which assigns a random disguise and kill method to each target on the same map.
The potential list of disguises can be anything that counts toward a map’s Chameleon challenge, as well as 47’s suit. The kill methods can be lethal melees (like Kitchen Knife, Fire Axe), firearms (SMG, Pistol), accidents (Electrocution, Fall), poisons, explosives or simply Neck Snap. Sometimes additional complications are spun, such as loud kills, or eliminations without target pacification.
Players are allowed to use any item and starting location they’ve unlocked. They must complete the mission with a Silent Assassin rating, on Professional difficulty, without saving or loading mid-attempt.
Going competitive
There are countless ways to turn this single player experience into a multiplayer spectacle, including races, royale and team events. The most common of these, however is the 1v1 roulette match, used most competitions, including Roulette Rivals.2
In a roulette match, both players receive the same spin at the same time. Whoever finishes the spin first in real time, is the winner of the map, earning two points for their efforts. If neither players finish in the allocated time (usually 30 minutes) or they finish too close to each other (usually 2 seconds), they share the points equally. Roulette Rivals matches typically last until one player reaches six points, with the winner advancing to the next round of the brackets.
The core appeal of roulette is the real time uncertainty: players must stream their gameplay, but are not allowed to know how their opponent is doing. They are constantly torn between playing fast and playing consistent: every second can make the difference, but a single restart can ruin everything.
Here’s an example of a Roulette Rivals 14 match between The Rieper 47 and Dein Nomos, seen in a shoutcasted (commentated) match. We can see that Rieper is leading 4 points to 2 against Dein, before and during the fourth map of the match in Hokkaido. Roulette Rivals players have the opportunity to pick and ban (veto) one map before each match, so we also know that the first two maps were Sapienza and Ambrose, with Mendoza and Berlin being banned from this particular match.
Next post: About Hitman Roulette #2 - Resources
Due to lack of variability, vanilla roulette rules discount the tutorial maps (Freeform Training, The Final Test), as well as Hawke’s Bay (Nightcall) and Romania (Untouchable). Certain rulesets operate with a different map pool and may include these missions along with seasonal or bonus missions.
Roulette Rivals is the community’s biggest and most prestigious roulette competition, held every three months by Frote7’s Speedrun Community, with prizes for the winner.