Is Killing Room a Shameless Rip-Off of Killing Floor?

There has always been a certain grey area in the video games industry when it comes to the difference between a fan-inspired reproduction and basic clone. Bloodbath Kavkaz is a recent example which ripped off Hotline Miami in a clunky and poorly executed manner. The latest entry vying for Greenlight votes is Killing Room and described as a “Rogue-like FPS with permadeath, RPG elements and tons of humour”.

The theme is relatively similar to Killing Floor but doesn’t tread too close to the popular title’s source material. However, the basic gun-play is reminiscent of Killing Floor. Most noticeably, the Killing Room font is identical to Killing Floor and it’s pretty embarrassing. Of course, this could a bizarre coincidence but I think that would be a naive conclusion. Here is a few select quotes from the developer addressing people’s concerns:

“Too late for this – but our graphic artist never heard about Killing Floor, he is just not that type to play such games or even know about their existence so it is pure coincidence and we really cannot check all the time if “this” is similar to “that”, we wouldn’t do anything else, we are small studio. :-)”.

“We decided for name Killing Room because it was best fit for the first game concept we had and we decided to keep it like that. We won’t change our project just because there already is game that everyone knows and has half (oh, isn’t using word “half” also sin? 🙂 ) of the name identical. :-)”.

“In the beginning, we were thinking about “escape game” that is really killing, like Saw or something like that so Killing+Room was the best fit.”

Perhaps, he is struggling to accentuate his thoughts due to the language barrier but some of the responses are fairly weak. Honestly, Killing Room looks like a PlayStation 2 game, and the original Red Faction was more aesthetically pleasing. It will be interesting to see how this Greenlight campaign pans out and if the game will becomes a permanent fixture on Steam.

Do you think Killing Room is a rip-off and should be removed from Steam Greenlight?