Thick As Thieves is a “stealth-action heist game” from Otherside Entertainment, who boast among its ranks such illustrious Looking Glass Studios alum as Paul Neurath and Warren Spector. They’ve got a healthy dose of immersive sim lineage, basically, and Thick As Thieves looks to channel some of that into bite sized co-op burglary missions. You sneak about, avoid traps, take down guards, fill your pockets with loot, and sniff out clues that lead you toward whatever your big score is for the level.
While the mandatory Wand Report pocket employee handbook specifically forbids “having mates”, we’re aware that some of you are probably interested in how this thing plays with friends, so we took it for a spin on co-op. The results were…mixed. Aside from the ghosts, who were unambiguously awful.
Nic: I remember us both being disappointed with how shallow the stealth felt, and how few options we had, especially for something positioning itself as an immersive sim. You start with an (admittedly rad) grapple gun for reaching ledges, some smoke bombs, a magic detective vision crystal on a stick, and that’s about it. The smoke bombs say they’re for hiding, but they also do the Assassin’s Creed thing of immobilising guards long enough that you can go in and take them all out. No neck stabbing here though, only family friendly choking.
Ben: The smokebombs feel overpowered – they got us out of a few pinches, and felt like a tension-sapping superpower because of how long they incapacitated every guard caught up in the cloud.
Nic: Right. But they were also the only real option we had for getting ourselves out of scrapes. Initially I figured, ok, this is a live service problem. At long last, enshitification has finally come for a subgenre so ancient and irrelevant to most people that I’d foolishly considered it safe. The idea is that you start off with basically nothing, and the promise of one day being Dishonored’s Corvo is enough to keep you shirking basic responsibilities and grinding experience. Eventually, you’ll have logged enough hours to make whatever spreadsheet they’re feeding player retention into happy enough to allow a basement full of captive behavioral psychologists to get their weekly salted gruel ration.
But if the plan is that you unlock more equipment as you progress, the offerings so far look a bit stingy. Aside from the laundry pile of exciting cosmetics like “glasses”, and “tinted glasses” and “glasses, but half” (monocle), there’s very little here. There’s what reads like a pickpocketing grenade that can also activate switches (something you’d think a decently shaped rock could pull off). There’s an ‘insult fairy’, seemingly a thrown distraction (something you’d think a decently heavy rock could pull off). And finally, there’s a vial of slippery sap, which functionally just sounds like a bag of marbles (small, smooth, spherical rocks).
But even putting aside your own inventory, the world itself has barely any of that lovely, reactive texture that makes immersive sims shine. I remember you getting frustrated that you couldn’t hack security devices to use against the enemies, right?
Ben: Well, I guess it partly comes down to the expectations we’ve developed through playing exemplars of this genre for so many years – many of them from Looking Glass Studios. The best games almost always give you a range of options to deal with threats, but the turrets’ simplicity pointed to a worryingly shallow rejection of that thinking. Maybe we just didn’t have the right equipment yet, or maybe it’s yet to be added, but coming across deactivated turrets in the opening level – with a giant cartoon button on the back – and discovering that our only available choices were to ignore them or switch them on and let them start targeting us, felt like a layer of polish was missing.
It was like, and I don’t say this lightly, trying a Roblox version of a game that you dearly love, and finding everything simplified to the point that it no longer has any entertainment value. It feels like a huge layer of gameplay is missing.
Nic: You absolutely do say that lightly. “This is the Roblox version of a decent bacon butty”, you’ve been known to shout at flustered Subway workers. But I don’t disagree. The co-op itself felt like a missed trick, too. You both play the exact same character, with the same options, so there’s very few opportunities for clever plays. “You go that way, I’ll go this way, and whoever this guard doesn’t spot can knock him out” is fun maybe twice. You’d think that in a game built around thievery, we might be able to play as characters with complimentary specialities and weaknesses. Something to get us chatting and planning, you know? But the ripe fantasy of being a crack team of distinct superbastards just isn’t there. Where are our opportunities for dastardly and dashing derring-do, Mr. Spector?
Ben: If it helps, I still think of you as a superbastard. But yeah, it’s the least engaging type of co-op – that is, doubled up muscle rather than complimentary strategies. There was no need for me to be there, really. Other than, as you say, acting as a distraction so the other person can dip into the room, there was nothing that required more than one person to achieve. Again, it just ends up feeling very unsatisfying.
I found we chatted about the game, but weren’t really discussing tactics or approaches other than agreeing on the rough areas that objectives might be hiding. I quite liked the lock-pick mechanic, though, and it was good to have another pair of eyes watching my back so that I could focus on it.
Nic: That minigame was neat, yeah. And I liked the calling cards you leave after nabbing some treasure. I will say that I quite enjoyed the level design, too. There are two massive maps available at the moment: a stately mansion of some sort, and a second, spookier stately mansion of some sort. Each is surrounded by a rat’s maze of alleys and tunnels and various other thievery holes, and you can take routes to start your heist on the higher floors.
The fantasy of a heist game really shines when you’re cleaning out believable spaces, and while the game opts for a somewhat ill-defined steampunk setting with supernatural elements, I found the levels quite believable and interesting as real spaces. I remember that we couldn’t find the stairs to the basement in the first level so we just jumped down a dumbwaiter. Now that’s architectural verisimilitude! In dumbwaiter form!
Of course, however nice the maps are, the game does actively disincentivise exploration with those fucking ghosts.
Ben: The ghosts were irritating. Apparently invincible, able to float through walls, and on us in the first mission right after we’d switched the turrets off again. I suppose they create a need to react quickly, but ultimately that just means legging it and returning after you’ve lost them, rather than an engaging change of strategy. I’m with you on the maps, though, it was fun exploring each area, and I think the game looks great for the most part – the spooky cellars, in particular, were very atmospheric.
Though I will say that the maps currently feel devoid of life, even before we knock out the patrolling guards. There’s something clinical and empty about the spaces right now – I think part of it comes down to the fact that there’s nothing to do other than pilfer stuff, and locate the mission objective items which… also need to be pilfered. It gets a bit repetitive, and we rarely faced any particular difficulty getting to or half-inching items.
Nic: Also, this is my pettiest complaint, but I would like the option to kick people and things. Even if it’s functionally useless, does nothing to help you when you get caught, and actively makes your situation worse, I would at least like the option. My hungry foot longs to make its mark on the world.
Ben: You could have just kicked me from the session, perhaps? Something to keep in your back pocket for next time. I think there’s an interesting skeleton of a game here, but it needs to be fleshed out. It’s being released at a remarkably low price point, though, so it feels churlish to be disappointed in a game that will only cost $4.99/£4.99. But even at that price, I can’t see myself playing those two maps – that’s all you get for now – many times over before losing interest. The underlying gameplay just isn’t deep enough to support that kind of replayability yet, even with dynamic elements, and randomised guard locations and security.
Don’t get me wrong – I think there’s fun to be had here, but Otherside will need to bolster the initial offering quickly to sustain interest. The team behind this have so much experience and have helped define the genre, so there’s no reason that can’t happen.
