Gloomwood - Thief-ish stealth horror game from New Blood Interactive - now available on Early Access

[SharkClub]

This one in particular should not be a surprise to anyone. I hope those decline ratings weren't directed at this.

This game is likely to have problems, one of which is advertising itself as Thief with guns when it's more like low poly Dishonored or victorian Deus Ex minus the RPG elements, but the absence of autism ghosting should be the very last thing on everyone's minds.

Thief was never designed with ghosting in mind and if you follow all the community-made autism rules it can take 8 hours of inching around some missions and exploiting AI to finish them without busting ghost or supreme ghost. Nobody should be saying "oh no I can't ghost Gloomwood that means it's decline", the vast majority of the people who go on about how cool ghosting is have never even bothered to try it.

It is tedium bordering on the insane and while it can be interesting to see what strategies get used to complete a mission without busting ghost it is not how 99.9% of people play Thief, Thief 2, Deus Ex, Dishonored, etc. and thus should not even be a consideration for the developers. If people want to come up with autism rules they can always make a handful of exceptions for parts that don't fit (which literally already exist for a bunch of Thief1&2 ghosting).

Lovely to hear Terri Brosius will be providing her voice for this game.

 

[Zombra]

It was never Thief to begin with, so it's not decline when the game gives you freedom how to play it.

Giving you the "freedom" to either shoot things with a shotgun or quit the game is not a great range of choices.

did the developer say "you are forced to shoot stuff"? He didn't. In fact he specifically says he's trying to avoid the situations where it's impossible to ghost.

A lot of gamers while playing a stealth game prefer to reload the last save instead of continuing after getting caught. Gloomwood gives you means to continue and the developer urges you to not feel guilty about it.

You're absolutely right and I cheerfully retract my earlier snarky post.

 

[gerey]

Problem with ghosting in games like Thief, and likely this one, is that it demands the player not interact with 90% of the game. I guess the dev screwed himself over a bit when the compared the game to Thief - but it does make sense if we look at Thief the way the original developers meant it to be played - while combat was certainly discouraged actually ambushing enemies (bonking the guards on the head, using holy water on the undead etc.) made completing objectives that much easier.

Some could argue that the blackjack largely trivialized a lot of the game, but you can't blame the player for optimally using the resources at their disposal.

I do hope, however, that Gloomwood will have mechanics in place that will inconvenience players that backstab every enemy they encounter, because far too many stealth games don't punish the player enough for going stealth + lethal, which is usually the approach that nets the least expense of resources and the one the AI has the most problems dealing with.

 

[Curratum]

Gloomwood isn't decline because of ghost

Problem with ghosting in games like Thief, and likely this one, is that it demands the player not interact with 90% of the game. I guess the dev screwed himself over a bit when the compared the game to Thief - but it does make sense if we look at Thief the way the original developers meant it to be played - while combat was certainly discouraged actually ambushing enemies (bonking the guards on the head, using holy water on the undead etc.) made completing objectives that much easier.

Some could argue that the blackjack largely trivialized a lot of the game, but you can't blame the player for optimally using the resources at their disposal.

I do hope, however, that Gloomwood will have mechanics in place that will inconvenience players that backstab every enemy they encounter, because far too many stealth games don't punish the player enough for going stealth + lethal, which is usually the approach that nets the least expense of resources and the one the AI has the most problems dealing with.

Gloomwood will have an OP horror / monster that was called "corpse duster" or something, that comes to eat the corpses you leave behind, then stalks you in the level, I think.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Gloomwood isn't decline because of ghost

Problem with ghosting in games like Thief, and likely this one, is that it demands the player not interact with 90% of the game. I guess the dev screwed himself over a bit when the compared the game to Thief - but it does make sense if we look at Thief the way the original developers meant it to be played - while combat was certainly discouraged actually ambushing enemies (bonking the guards on the head, using holy water on the undead etc.) made completing objectives that much easier.

Some could argue that the blackjack largely trivialized a lot of the game, but you can't blame the player for optimally using the resources at their disposal.

I do hope, however, that Gloomwood will have mechanics in place that will inconvenience players that backstab every enemy they encounter, because far too many stealth games don't punish the player enough for going stealth + lethal, which is usually the approach that nets the least expense of resources and the one the AI has the most problems dealing with.

Gloomwood will have an OP horror / monster that was called "corpse duster" or something, that comes to eat the corpses you leave behind, then stalks you in the level, I think.

Yeah I remember the dev saying something like this a few years ago.
Here you go:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1150760/discussions/0/2288338831427962892/
"And yes, piles of corpses will encourage the corpse duster to appear and he's significantly tougher than a standard enemy."

And this:

https://twitter.com/tafferking451/status/1272526715915513856?lang=en

 

[toughasnails]

The sort of situation that this game places you in and what you are facing against isn't really something where I would get out of my way to avoid killing enemies. But I also never much bothered to avoid taking down enemies in Thief's undead sections for example, it didn't make much sense in the context.

 

[Zombra]

Ghosting is kind of like speedrunning, where the player makes up their own rules because they like to see certain things happen on the screen, not because it has anything to do with the game.

In other words ... it is LARPing.

 

[Strig]

Ghosting is kind of like speedrunning, where the player makes up their own rules because they like to see certain things happen on the screen, not because it has anything to do with the game.

In other words ... it is LARPing.

No, it's not. It's just RPing. Nothing LA about it.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

- has a linear level progression where you go from A to B while avoiding enemies;
- saving on save points
- grid-based inventory tetris;
- resource scarcity;
- dangerous enemies, high letality combat, optional stealth.

This is a bona fide survival horror, it has more in common with resident evil games.

So basically classic RE in 1st person with some inspiration from Thief in regards to setting and level design?
That actually sounds pretty cool.

 

[Zombra]

Ghosting is kind of like speedrunning, where the player makes up their own rules because they like to see certain things happen on the screen, not because it has anything to do with the game. In other words ... it is LARPing.

No, it's not. It's just RPing. Nothing LA about it.

Note this is not my definition, it's the Codex's. If you do anything in a game that the game doesn't "care about", you're LARPing. Since ghosting doesn't give you xp, it's LARPing.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The possibility of ghosting is a emergent property of the way the game is implemented. Even if it is not fun or extremely boring, if you can ghost then the game has a good level of depth and player agenda.

 

[toughasnails]

Even if it is not fun or extremely boring, if you can ghost then the game has a good level of depth and player agenda.

Well then the dev explicitly said

I’m trying to avoid any situations that are impossible to ghost/non-lethal, but it’s also not the main way I’m balancing the game for. So basically - you can go at it, but there’s no promises it’ll actually be that fun lol

 

[ColCol]

So, I've been checking the main dev's twitter feed recently. He's starting to make negative comments about the project's development . I don't know if it will impact anything, but it may be sign of things to come

Link to a recent example thread:


https://twitter.com/TafferKing451/status/1552556975803666432

 

[Curratum]

Dev hell so deep, it hurts to watch.

 

[Tweed]

I didn't care much for this when I tried the demo, just seemed like a poor man's thief. Guess that's a good thing since it's never coming out.

 

[Bad Sector]

So, I've been checking the main dev's twitter feed recently. He's starting to make negative comments about the project's development . I don't know if it will impact anything, but it may be sign of things to come

Looks like he's getting stressed out:



Making a full game as a solo project is certainly not easy and going at it for two years with no apparent end in sight (early access isn't "end") can be stressful. Hopefully, for his reputation's sake, he wont abandon the game after the early access is released - and he'll manage to finish it before he gets fully burned out.

I used to think early access being a neat idea but after seeing it in practice for years i don't see the long term benefit for developers (ok sure, you get some money earlier, but this is almost like a loan - and you actually get less money while gamers play a potentially worse version). Perhaps after the game is done and you have a working *beta* version as a "there be bugs, beware" release for those who don't mind, but from the top of my head i can't think of any game that used early access for that.

 

[toughasnails]

Probably understandable anxiety given that the early access launch is just around corner unless he delays it, and the game ended up receiving way more attention that he likely ever expected it to early on.

 

[Curratum]

No, he won't abandon it, he will just sell people EA, and then take another 4 years to finish it.

 

[ColCol]

Probably understandable anxiety given that the early access launch is just around corner unless he delays it, and the game ended up receiving way more attention that he likely ever expected it to early on.

Yeah, I will say once the EA announcement came out his posts started sounding a lot more stressed out .

 

[HoboForEternity]

Hope the guy pulls trough alright. Jumping from level based shooter to imsim must be quite crazy.

 

[Jenkem]

No, he won't abandon it, he will just sell people EA, and then take another 4 years to finish it.

at least it will be out before wrath!

 

[toughasnails]

Hello patient denizens of Gloomwood,

I bring a bit of news.

Due to some unforeseen game development issues that have cropped up over the last few months, as well as several of our developers falling sick to The Gloom (COVID) we've made the decision to push back the Gloomwood Early Access release date. But only by 3 weeks. To September 6th.
It seems that ever since we announced the release date we've been hit with so many issues you would think the immersive sim curse is indeed real, but we will power through it.

This extra time will allow us to make sure all these issues are sorted, add extra polish, and give some space to the major update for one of our other games, ULTRAKILL, which is now releasing its second act on August 16th.

 

[Boleskine]

There's no better way to announce a delay than to have Malcolm McDowell do it.

 

[vortex]

Who is Malcolm McDowell voicing in Gloomwood?

 

[Curratum]

Dave Oshry blowing more money on gimmicks and memes, anything as long as you don't have to actually release anything.

Honestly, at this point, because of the way NB social accounts are run, the majority of NB fans are alphabet soup zoomers, so it should work out for them.