Thick as Thieves

In Thick as Thieves you are born under the start of the five finger discount which means, you live to do heists either solo or coop. For people who have played the Thief or the Dishonored series the game will feel very familiar, so if you ever thought that either of those games needed a coop mode or if you just want to steal more stuff in a cool game: 'Thick as Thieves' might be the game you were looking for.

The story is being told during 16 contracts that take place in two maps. "Only two?!" you might ask. Yes, but every time you visit the level changes a bit. Sometimes walkable cables are missing, other times different vents are opened and in the higher difficulty levels the security details as in "How many guards are there?", "What security devices protect the place?" and so on will differ from run to run. Also, if you're playing the story you'll get a second objective on the map: one random heist like stealing a set of gems or a certain amount of valuable items for example. Sadly the story contracts aren't available during coop so if you want to play with a partner from the start you'll have to skip the story contracts. But don't worry, you're not missing a lot as the story is a bit basic and only being told with a few text messages, plus - Spoilers - the story isn't quite finished yet. Whether the devs plan on expanding the story within Thick of Thieves via paid or free DLCs or develop a sequel is not known yet. One of the devs answered my questions about that topic that "[they]'ll be chatting about plans at some point in the future : )".

When playing coop or solo you have the choice between two thieves: Spider and Chameleon.They have access to four shared skills of which you can choose two to go into a mission. Each of them has a unique skill which they'll always have, plus, you'll always bring the wallhacking tool. The shared skills are unlockable via levelups and the gold you steal, just like Chameleon who isn't playable until later. The skills will help you deal with the many traps, turrets, cameras and guards the level throws at you. Sadly most of those things are fairly easy to deal with. Guards don't care whether the lights are off or not, they will stand in a previously lit room and not be bothered by it besides the occasional "I can't see a thing.". Even if you turn off the bright ceiling lights while they're in the room with you they stay unfazed. An alarmed guard, whether they're dead or undead, for example will calm down very soon and forget about it. Also, none of the devices send out a level-wide alarm which means failure to stay stealthy is not as much of a problem because the consequences aren't as long-lasting as one might fear. Even if you die it's not the end of the run, you'll simply respawn after a few seconds and drop all the items you collected on the spot where you died. The bigger hurdle difficulty-wise is the time limit we have for each run. Depending on our non-story objective we either get 45 or 30 minutes maximum to finish the run. At the end of the timer or once we complete the non-story objective the home portal pops up. And if we haven't reached the portal before the 8 minute portal timer runs out we lose everything we didn't manage to stash away into a golden loot portal. We can find them scattered throughout the level, though they appear less frequently when playing on a higher difficulty setting. With higher difficulty settings also comes an increase of guards, devices in general and the speed with which turrets and cameras move and guards recover from being knocked out. Also, guards start carrying lamps so even if you turn off the lights, they will be able to find you, if you stand in their light beam. As a reward you get more gold for each item you find, you'll find more items and you also get more XP. Something else that is scattered throughout the level and is very helpful in finding your objectives are clues. As soon as you're close to them you'll find them on your radar and once you pick them up the note will tell you information about the whereabouts of the loot you're tasked to steal or useful information about keys and safe codes that secure those items.

The story playtime you can get out of this 5€ game alone lies between 4 to 9 hours, more if you take your time or fail the objective because you took too much time or simply couldn't find it. The latter happened to me a few times. Besides that you are free to play the maps on the highest difficulty setting which unlocks after finishing contract 16, plus there's coop. If you're planning to play coop though you should have a friend to play with or ask in the game's discord server beforehand. Currently it seems that not a lot of players are queuing for coop matchmaking. One of the many reasons I think that is, is that the game will move you into a solo queue after a couple of minutes waiting for coop matchmaking. At the time of writing this review this is NOT optional which means if you really want to queue for public matchmaking you will have to go back into the den after being moved into solo mode and re-queue again… Probably multiple times because the other big factor why it's so hard to find a random person to play coop with is that at peak times there are between 200 to 400 people that play Thick as Thieves right now.

So the question now is, would I recommend 'Thick as Thieves'? The world that is shown to us in this introductory taste looks and feels great and has a lot of potential. But the lack of maps is felt very quickly. Even though with every visit vents and passages in the level layout changes, and I'm certain these changes and the higher difficulty settings will improve the replayability for sure, they are too small to detract from the fact that there aren't enough maps. On the other hand the game only costs about 5$ which outweighs the lack of content a lot! It is practically a steal at this price point and doesn't need a sale to be worth your money. Hopefully the developers will see that there's a hunger for more and will release more maps in the future. As already mentioned the story hasn't been completed and the developers themselves call this an "introduction to Thick as Thieves" so they have bigger plans for this new IP. The only question is: Can they fund it and will they develop it?

Gameplay-wise I can recommend the game if you liked the Dishonored, the Thief and maybe even if you liked the Hitman series. A very important gameplay feature that'll probably decide whether or not you'll like the game are the timers. Most stealth games don't pressure you into somewhat rushing decisions. They'll let you explore the level, figure out the patrol routes and decide when to strike. Taking your time is not quite possible in 'Thick as Thieves' especially in the highest difficulty setting where there are many moving parts. At first I hated the timers then after a few runs I felt their impact less and less because I managed to find the objectives quicker because I learned the layout of the map and knew where to go even when a passage was closed this time. I still feel its impact while playing on the highest difficulty setting but I'm sure that this too will become easier and easier once I play more often. I still wished the timer was optional and instead of endless respawns we'd get a very limited supply to balance out the missing timer.
Also, if you want to play coop I'd suggest you get a friend to play it with you by either buying it for them or pressu.. asking them nicely. If you don't have friends (that are interested in playing this kind of game) you should probably ask around on their Discord server when regular matchmaking doesn't give you a person to steal hippos with.

PC version copy for review purposes provided by the publisher Megabit Publishing