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

sosmoflux · Jan 26, 2023

Filcher is good

═█═ · Feb 1, 2023

sosmoflux said:
Filcher is good

It just does everything worse than Thief does. For one thing there is no voice acting AFAIR and enemies don't wear tap shoes so orienting yourself with sound is impossible. I didn't give it much time but I also don't think you could lean against doors and stuff like that either. Was there even a lean button? I thought it was mediocre, but don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad or horrible to play or anything. It's one of those games that makes you understand just how much some of those small touches in the source material did for you.

gerey · Feb 1, 2023

═█═ said:
I didn't give it much time but I also don't think you could lean against doors and stuff like that either. Was there even a lean button?

I have to wonder how much time you actually spent on the game considering you can't even complete the tutorial without actually leaning, and the tutorial takes up all of 10 minutes.

Guards do have "tap shoes", the sound engine may not be as good as Thief's (but then again, none actually are), but you can easily tell where a guard is by sound alone, how far away they are and what surface they're walking on, even when the sound is muffled by a door.

And yes, the game is not as good as Thief 1 and 2 - the maps lack verticality, there's no mantling, no rope arrow equivalent, no water arrows, no pre-mission purchase screen, no voice acting, the guards are 2D sprites, as are many of the objects, the maps are smaller than the ones in the Thief games (but there is no in-mission saving, so you have to be careful).

Then again, the game was made by one person. One single, passionate developer, and he did a stellar job with the limited resources at hand. The lack of VA didn't bother me because the number of conversations between guards is limited, there's maybe 6 total throughout the campaign.

The author makes up for the lack of voice acting in the cutscenes by turning them into wonderful comic panels:

The art direction was clearly inspired by Bruce Timm's Batman - I heard someone call the art direction of that cartoon Dark Deco, and it's as good a way of describing the artstyle of the game as any.

So, is the game a challenger to the Thief throne? Obviously not. Is it worth the $5 to $8 you are likely to spend on it (or your free time if pirating)? I would say yes. I'm near the end of the game, and having replayed nearly all the missions multiple times (to discover secrets and get the ghost rating) I'm clocking around 14 hours and don't feel like I have wasted my time.

═█═ · Feb 2, 2023

gerey said:
I have to wonder how much time you actually spent on the game considering you can't even complete the tutorial without actually leaning, and the tutorial takes up all of 10 minutes.

I played it in 2021 and forgot all about it until I saw it mentioned in this thread. IDK, maybe I've been too harsh on it. I remember being disappointed after some guy told me it was just like Thief and tried it out.

gerey said:
So, is the game a challenger to the Thief throne? Obviously not. Is it worth the $5 to $8 you are likely to spend on it (or your free time if pirating)? I would say yes. I'm near the end of the game, and having replayed nearly all the missions multiple times (to discover secrets and get the ghost rating) I'm clocking around 14 hours and don't feel like I have wasted my time.

I said that it wasn't a bad game, just don't get how people can get so excited over it if you have played Thief already since it doesn't do anything original. I'm going to put this on my backburner and play it again after MGSV but if this game sucks I'll be holding you responsible.

Rocket-Propelled Game · May 7, 2023

I don't get why anyone would spend money on an incomplete game like this when they could buy the first two Thief games for dirt cheap and then continually entertain themselves afterwards with literal decades of Fan Missions.

Or just play The Dark Mod for free.

ciox · May 7, 2023

It's called a bandwagon.

Bad Sector · May 7, 2023

Rocket-Propelled Game said:
I don't get why anyone would spend money on an incomplete game like this when they could buy the first two Thief games for dirt cheap and then continually entertain themselves afterwards with literal decades of Fan Missions.

By that logic why spend money on any game? Half of them are available as Doom mods and the rest aren't that great anyway.

Rocket-Propelled Game · May 7, 2023

Bad Sector said:
Rocket-Propelled Game said:

I don't get why anyone would spend money on an incomplete game like this when they could buy the first two Thief games for dirt cheap and then continually entertain themselves afterwards with literal decades of Fan Missions.

Click to expand...

By that logic why spend money on any game? Half of them are available as Doom mods and the rest aren't that great anyway.

It seemed like a good idea at the time when the Doom modding/retro-shooter community wasn't a complete cesspool and there was a dearth of AAA FPSes I actually enjoyed.

v1c70r14 · May 8, 2023

Rocket-Propelled Game said:
I don't get why anyone would spend money on an incomplete game like this when they could buy the first two Thief games for dirt cheap and then continually entertain themselves afterwards with literal decades of Fan Missions.

A better question would be why so many developers think that it is worthwhile to spend their time developing inferior copies of better games.

LarryTyphoid · May 8, 2023

I'm more hoping for the game to be a solid first-person survival horror game than a Thief clone.

DJOGamer PT · May 8, 2023

v1c70r14 said:
Rocket-Propelled Game said:

I don't get why anyone would spend money on an incomplete game like this when they could buy the first two Thief games for dirt cheap and then continually entertain themselves afterwards with literal decades of Fan Missions.

Click to expand...

A better question would be why so many developers think that it is worthwhile to spend their time developing inferior copies of better games.

An even better question would be, why do so many midwits assume that just because a game has sought inspiration from other games, then that's ultimate proof that said game is trying to replicate the same gameplay experience.

Bad Sector · May 8, 2023

DJOGamer PT said:
why do so many midwits assume that just because a game has sought inspiration from other games, then that's ultimate proof that said game is trying to replicate the same gameplay experience.

Most likely some people took the thiefwithguns.com domain as the game's entire design document instead of a reference at the Oblivion with guns joke.

ciox · May 9, 2023

Gloomwood fans continue to pretend like the main guy hasn't made every effort that is humanly possible to link Gloomwood and Thief on social media, articles, etc.

Why? The fuck knows.

LarryTyphoid · May 9, 2023

Comparing your game to Thief never seems to end well. People will point out how your game is worse than Thief in several aspects (as most games are), so you have to then say "uhh it isn't supposed to be like Thief it's its own thing!". Same thing happened with Dishonored.

Bad Sector · May 9, 2023

It worked for Deus Ex didn't it? Warren Spector did compare with Thief saying that the stealth in Deus Ex is worse than Thief :-P

DJOGamer PT · May 9, 2023

But that was back when the internet wasn't so autistic...

Jenkem · May 9, 2023

ciox said:
Gloomwood fans continue to pretend like the main guy hasn't made every effort that is humanly possible to link Gloomwood and Thief on social media, articles, etc.

Why? The fuck knows.

Bullshit. The only one who's done that is Dave Oshry, the New Blood President/CEO, the developer himself has only ever spoken about Thief when talking about some of the systems it uses as inspiration. Do you really consider the publishing Jew to be "the main guy?"

Netch · May 10, 2023

Bad Sector said:
It worked for Deus Ex didn't it? Warren Spector did compare with Thief saying that the stealth in Deus Ex is worse than Thief :-P

It worked for Deus Ex because the selling point was that every problem had multiple solutions and the game had a variety of playstyles. Warren Spector has talked about this, saying that when they were making the game they knew that if players focused on one facet of the game by itself and said "the stealth isn't as good as Thief," or "the shooting isn't as good as Doom," or anything along those lines they'd be screwed. They were counting on players appreciating the scope of having multiple options for handling a given scenario.

Bad Sector · May 10, 2023

Netch said:
knew that if players focused on one facet of the game by itself and said "the stealth isn't as good as Thief," or "the shooting isn't as good as Doom," or anything along those lines they'd be screwed.

Yeah i know, i actually had that exact postmortem he wrote (IIRC it was in Gamasutra) in mind when i posted that

. I brought up Thief vs Deus Ex because AFAIK Gloomwood is trying to be more of an immersive sim ala Deus Ex with a Thief inspired coat of paint than a pure stealth game like Thief.

I think by this point there anyone who has even a passing interest in Gloomwood can either tell that the game has only a mostly visual inspiration from Thief or their lack of perception will make it hard to play the game anyway.