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

Bad Sector

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It'll take a while, so what? It isn't like it is some AAAA game that if it gets release 2 months too late its graphics will be outdated or something :-P
 

Curratum

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It'll take a while, so what? It isn't like it is some AAAA game that if it gets release 2 months too late its graphics will be outdated or something :-P

So what? So the developer ends up disappearing inside his own rear end, reinventing the wheel and coming up with "immersive gameplay", while in reality he spent 3 months implementing an in-world, first-person slotted REvil-style inventory suitcase and then he spent another couple of weeks masturbating over it as though he had come up with something amazing.

It's not even entirely Dillon's fault. I feel. The worst thing happening to this project is taking on Szymanski to actively work on the game.
 

Bad Sector

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I still fail to see the issue here, he's slow, but again so what? It isn't like he put out preorders (unless the game was on something like Kickstarter and i missed it) or released and abandoned some early access version. AFAIK all he did was to release a bunch of videos and screenshots of a game he's working on and talk about it on twitter so even if for some reason the game never comes out it doesn't affect anyone or change anything.
 

Infinitron

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https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/watch-5-minutes-of-gloomwood-the-best-game-ive-seen-at-e3-yet/

Watch 5 minutes of Gloomwood, the best game I've seen at E3 yet
'Thief with guns' doesn't do it justice.

We don't get enough immersive sims nowadays, so you can bet I want to scream it from the rooftops when a new one pops up and looks this good. Gloomwood, a first-person stealth game from Dillon Rogers and David Szymanski, has been on my radar since its excellent demo came out last year. Now the game is back at the PC Gaming Show and publisher New Blood Interactive shared five new minutes of gameplay that you can (and should) watch above.

From what I can tell, the clip must be from the very beginning of the game as the player is getting acquainted with the basics of stealth, combat, and the inventory. And boy howdy, are those systems a feast for the eyes. Like in the demo, the grungy polygonal enemies and simplistic animations really work against all the dark hallways and eerie noises. Gloomwood has major Bloodborne vibes.

As a big fan of Dishonored and Prey 2017, I'm extremely into the diegetic inventory that lives inside the character's briefcase. You can drag and rotate items around to make room as needed, but you can also drag those items outside the case to place them in the world. You can see the player do that in the video with the bottle they throw to distract a prison guard. The dragging system seems like it could split the difference nicely between a convenient hotkey bar and the laborious task of actually fishing crap out of a briefcase. It's quick, yet deliberate. You can keep a few things equipped like your cane sword or revolver, but anything extraneous requires some safety to reasonably access.

Speaking of the revolver, the reload animation is slow and precise in a way I can totally get behind. Judging from the video and last year's playable demo, you won't get far if a minor scrape turns into an extended fight. The cane sword seems suited for stabbing from stealth, not slashing or fending off a wave of blades Dishonored-style. There's also a double-barrelled shotgun that looks similarly fun to reload.

Gloomwood strikes me as the type of game where a note might tell me which guy to stab to get the key I need, or a lever might open a sewer grate that bypasses that risk altogether. That's all I really need to get excited about a game—I just really like the genre—but what's sending me over the edge are all the neat details that today's video shows off.

Gloomwood still has no release date, but you can play the demo any time.
 

DemonKing

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Looking good - much improved on the demo I tried a year or so ago and that was already pretty good.
 
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SharkClub

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Strap Yourselves In
It's definitely looking more and more like a Deus Ex clone than Thief. I mean, the reason Thief ended up the way it did was that LGS were not confident enough to make the combat in their Dark Camelot game good so they made it about a sneaky thief and the majority of the gameplay was about avoiding combat. From day 1 this has looked more like Deus Ex or Dishonored because there is a focus on guns and killing enemies rather than sneaking and stealing, and this isn't really a bad thing because I'm definitely still going to play a Deus Ex/Dishonored clone like this, but all the marketing is dumb surface level "Thief with guns" because it has a setting and art style that is vaguely Thief-like. The playable demo literally doesn't even have stealable loot except for like 20 coins scattered around the map and the major key items. Adding stuff like bear traps is taking Gloomwood even further away from Thief and towards Dishonored, too.

Also don't get me wrong, Thief 1 did have a lot of combat and even combat-centric missions, and I actually prefer it over Thief 2 because of the variety it offers in that regard, but it still never came close to Deus Ex or System Shock 2 when it comes to being combat-focused. Gloomwood seems much closer to the latter two games than Thief from a purely gameplay perspective.
 
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Curratum

Guest
What an absolute load of shit.

A full-year roundup showing features that could be added within a few months if this was a full-time project (Hint: it's not. I suggested that the dev is likely working on the game on his free time, off his dayjob and I got a polite nudge in the ribs and a Steam NewBlood mod message to stop discussing that).

Also, the inventory system was shown in action in SEPTEMBER 2020, it wasn't a change made in 2021. But if you take even that one out, it would make it seem like the game's got fuckall added to it in 2021. How are breakable boxes with items and a 50-polygon rotating combination lock on a safe model that already exists in the game a feature?

Notice how Early Access is coming in 2022. He wouldn't even narrow it down to first half of the year. So stay tuned for EA in September 2022, and the full release, given the speed at which this is developed, sometime in late 2024.
 
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Also, the inventory system was shown in action in SEPTEMBER 2020, it wasn't a change made in 2021. But if you take even that one out, it would make it seem like the game's got fuckall added to it in 2021. How are breakable boxes with items and a 50-polygon rotating combination lock on a safe model that already exists in the game a feature?
Videogames are hard, please buy early access thank you.

Even though I was thinking about D1P after trying the early demo, given how little it seems like things have improved since June 2020 I don't think I'm gonna jump on early access. The banter shown in that clip wasn't terribly exciting either which may just be a bad example or even placeholder bantz to show it's working, but since one of the things I bitched about with the demo was the lack of character for the enemies that's kind of a shame. Still hoping for the best from the game though.
 

toughasnails

Guest
What an absolute load of shit.

A full-year roundup showing features that could be added within a few months if this was a full-time project (Hint: it's not. I suggested that the dev is likely working on the game on his free time, off his dayjob and I got a polite nudge in the ribs and a Steam NewBlood mod message to stop discussing that).

Also, the inventory system was shown in action in SEPTEMBER 2020, it wasn't a change made in 2021. But if you take even that one out, it would make it seem like the game's got fuckall added to it in 2021. How are breakable boxes with items and a 50-polygon rotating combination lock on a safe model that already exists in the game a feature?

Notice how Early Access is coming in 2022. He wouldn't even narrow it down to first half of the year. So stay tuned for EA in September 2022, and the full release, given the speed at which this is developed, sometime in late 2024.
You are overdoing it. Remember what has been going on for the last two years and we don't know what his personal situation is and how he was impacted.
 

Curratum

Guest
What an absolute load of shit.

A full-year roundup showing features that could be added within a few months if this was a full-time project (Hint: it's not. I suggested that the dev is likely working on the game on his free time, off his dayjob and I got a polite nudge in the ribs and a Steam NewBlood mod message to stop discussing that).

Also, the inventory system was shown in action in SEPTEMBER 2020, it wasn't a change made in 2021. But if you take even that one out, it would make it seem like the game's got fuckall added to it in 2021. How are breakable boxes with items and a 50-polygon rotating combination lock on a safe model that already exists in the game a feature?

Notice how Early Access is coming in 2022. He wouldn't even narrow it down to first half of the year. So stay tuned for EA in September 2022, and the full release, given the speed at which this is developed, sometime in late 2024.
You are overdoing it. Remember what has been going on for the last two years and we don't know what his personal situation is and how he was impacted.

You mean like how Wrath Aeon of Ruin was impacted? Like how it was delayed multiple times and now has no fixed release date, apart from "sometime in 2022, pinky promise"?

Because 3DR / Wrath told people it was first delayed because several team members got Covid, back when the game was supposed to come out in Q1 2021. Then it was pushed back to August. Now it's "sometime in 2022".

And in reality, what happened was, the project founder left the team, several other members also quit the project and now it's probably just poor Skacky with a skeleton crew, even by "indie Q1 engine shooter" standards, left working on it.
 

Riskbreaker

Guest
So if you steal a guard's key and try to trap him you end up being worse off for your effort since not only is he getting to you anyway but is doing so in a way that causes extra noise and is bound to alert whoever/whatever else is nearby.
 

toughasnails

Guest
Yeah it's a bit counterintuitive. I suppose that at least not all enemies would be able to break doors and it's probably only the wooden ones that can be broken.
 
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Netch

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There's a few games that have tried to emulate Thief, but what I wanna know is when will somebody attempt to make a full game like Deep Cover? That would scratch both my Thief and Splinter Cell itches at the same time.
 

Zombra

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Locking a door on enemies does exactly what it should: it buys you time. What were y'all expecting? "Oh the door is locked, I will quietly return to my patrol and forget this incident"?

Very cool feature and I'm surprised it hasn't been done before. Has it?
 
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Netch

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Locking a door on enemies does exactly what it should: it buys you time. What were y'all expecting? "Oh the door is locked, I will quietly return to my patrol and forget this incident"?

Very cool feature and I'm surprised it hasn't been done before. Has it?

I'm pretty sure you can re-lock doors in Thief.
 

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