Enjoy Playing Smoking Kills
I stumbled across mentions of Smoking Kills when poking around old late-2000s game announcements, and it immediately struck me as this darkly comic take on open-world action. You were supposedly stepping into the shoes of a former hell-raiser turned anti-smoking vigilante, roaming neon-drenched streets and taking down shady tobacco kingpins. The whole vibe leaned into pulp-fiction tropes, mixing cheeky one-liners about secondhand smoke with a seriously stylized cityscape that looked like a cross between Blade Runner and a graphic novel panel.
From what I gather, the core gameplay loop revolved around creative uses of cigarette paraphernalia as weapons—think smoke grenades that blind enemies, boomerang cigars, and lighters that double as flamethrowers. You’d sneak through back alleys, tail targets in smoky jazz clubs, then spring into over-the-top firefights using a mix of stealth and ballistic flair. It was pitched as part stealth game, part run-and-gun romp, with a perk system tied into quitting habits. The more you resisted lighting up yourself, the better your special moves got.
Visually, Smoking Kills was supposed to lean on bold comic-strip aesthetics, with heavy shadows and bursts of neon color accentuating every punch, kick, and smoke plume. I’ve seen a handful of concept images floating around—slick character designs with cigarette packs for badges, burly bosses in stained lab coats experimenting on nicotine addicts, and a moody soundtrack blending jazz riffs with industrial beats. It was definitely going for that edgy “adults only” cartoon-crime feel.
Sadly, it never materialized beyond talk and a few leaked sketches. The studio apparently hit some funding snags, and with bigger franchises calling for attention, Smoking Kills quietly faded into development limbo. Still, every so often you’ll find a gamer or two waxing nostalgic about what might have been—an oddly ambitious mash-up of anti-smoking messaging and shoot-’em-up thrills that, even in concept, felt like it had a strange kind of potential.