Upcoming game: Thief Simulator

[STiFU]

I am a total sucker for high-tech sneaking like Splinter Cell, so I am farely interested in this upcoming game. Maybe some of you are too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WGV9eL6r0

[Bikerdude]

Stealing stuff in a steam punk setting in one thing, but stealing stuff in a contemporary urban setting is way to close to the bone.

[chakkman]

Looks interesting. Even though i have some concerns about the execution. Typically, a thief would well know where he can grab some good loot. He wouldn't just break into some ordinary looking house. So he steals a game console, a guitar, and the TV is too heavy for his "backpack". With an upgraded backpack he would be able to carry the TV. How's that gonna work? Never saw a backpack the size of a 40-50 inch TV. Also, he has the option to steal the owner's car. Err... never heard of a thief who went to the house he breaks in on foot, and then disappears with the owner's car. All seems a bit unrealistic for a "simulator". Maybe it's still a fun game though. Even though i wonder if such a gameplay doesn't become very repetitive and boring after a short time.

[Diego]

Stealing stuff in a steam punk setting in one thing, but stealing stuff in a contemporary urban setting is way to close to the bone.

I know what you mean! Maybe if instead of robbing people you were some kind of spy trying to uncover some conspiracy by entering specific people's houses it would make this less... troubling? I don't know which adjective. Close to the bone is as good as it gets.

[Springheel]

It will all depend on the game mechanics...how smart is the AI and what kind of sneaking can the player do?

[Destined]

I have this one on my wishlist, since I saw it. However, I am hesitant as I also would like to know if this becomes too repetitive. And I am curious if it ever comes out. There was a similar game (even with VR), that never got out of Early Access (I forgot what it was called), so I will definitely wait until it is finished.

[STiFU]

Always these people talking about realism... It's supposed to be fun not real. But as you correctly noted, we don't know yet whether it's fun or not. ;-) So let's wait and see.

 

I would also vastly prefer a spy-based background, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

[chakkman]

Thief Simulator suggests that it's supposed to be realistic.

[Xarg]

Goat Simulator would like to have a word with you..

[peter_spy]

Thief Simulator suggests that it's supposed to be realistic.

 

And that's why it looks pretty mundane and boring. What's the purpose of simulating thief's life, without using it in some interesting, subversive manner, like Thief series did?

[Oktokolo]

And that's why it looks pretty mundane and boring. What's the purpose of simulating thief's life, without using it in some interesting, subversive manner, like Thief series did?

It is like with the trucker and farming simulators. People exist who like playing such games. I know someone who memorized a 300 page manual to be able to fly a jumbo in a flight simulator.

A burglar simulator would not be that odd a game - but probably a bit too casual for the regular TDM player...

[STiFU]

This description of the game doesn't mention sneaking at all. Oh well, maybe it will be a bummer, but let's wait and see.

 

 

It is like with the trucker and farming simulators.

Ough, That's a tough comparison.

[Springheel]

Simulators can be great, if they do in fact accurately simulate the thing they claim to. The problem is that it's very hard to simulate anything on the PC other than a cockpit.

[Oktokolo]

Simulators can be great, if they do in fact accurately simulate the thing they claim to. The problem is that it's very hard to simulate anything on the PC other than a cockpit.

There are plenty of walking simulators out there though...

[peter_spy]

...Except it's just a really dumb name for first-person adventure games

[Carnage]

When I saw the title I thought about The Sting, where you had to plan your heists, hire people and watch your notority. Althought the last heist was a bit of a let down for me, I enjoyed the rest of the game, it's world and the funky characters. Still play it sometimes even though the graphics are horrible, but gameplay is what matters to me. The first game, The Clue, is also interesting and quite difficult. Also available for free if I'm not mistaking.

 

This game looks alright, but I do wonder how they are going to keep it interesting. It will need some story, because just robbing houses will get boring fast.

[STiFU]

The game is released and first reviews are out.

 

 

 

Thief Simulator is very good at one thing, and not very good at everything else. But the level of detail that has gone into all aspects of thievery - lockpicking, casing a house, breaking and entering, and stealth, just to name a few - is remarkable and worthy of commendation. Despite needing some serious help in terms of narrative and world-building, and having some dated systems that are tangentially related to stealing, Thief Simulator is a sandbox game at its heart and that means those concerns can be superfluous depending on what gamers' want.

 

Seems like you won't be happy with that game then, Carnage.

[Carnage]

The game is released and first reviews are out.

 

 

 

 

Seems like you won't be happy with that game then, Carnage.

Did you buy this game in the end STiFU?

[STiFU]

The reviews are not half bad, but I am gonna wait for a sale. I have a huge Steam-backlog, so I almost never buy games at release price.

[Carnage]

The reviews are not half bad, but I am gonna wait for a sale. I have a huge Steam-backlog, so I almost never buy games at release price.

I played it at a friend of mine and it's quite enjoyable. It certainly has some flaws but the developers seem to be listening and are releasing patches. As far as I know there are two neighbourhoods at the moment. The good thing is that the game doesn't take itself very serious and I like the humor (for example, "the owners of 112 don't want to fix their window because they think it is fine, go smash a window"). The start is bit tedious, because you don't have a lot of tools yet and therefore some houses are impossible to enter. But once you get most of the tools the possibilities open up a lot. AI is the worst part of the game and certainly needs some fixing. Routines sometimes don't make sense either (for example some people work nightshifts, but then when they come home they don't go to the bed and actually never sleep). The suspense is the best part of the game, especially when you're robbing a home when the owners are at home. Performance seems to be dropping after a while, which seems to be a common issue of Unity games, but is pretty good in general. All in all it's a game that I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would, but waiting for a sale is probably the best thing to do (especially with the christmas sales coming up).

[teh_saccade]

I've speed run the game today in a little over 5 minutes, because it's more fun in sandbox and messing around in freeplay after the story is done.

Also, it's pretty old Unity and, looking at how it's built - they've done a good job, but there's some bugs and glitches that will never be fixed without remaking the whole thing in a newer version of Unity, plus another year or so of play-testing to figure out all the logic errors.

The AI is "bespoke" copy/pasta. There's a lot of stuff in the game that isn't implemented. Idk if it isn't cut out because it's required inheritence or if it's an oversight.
Decompiling it, it seems that you hack out whole chunks and it doesn't change anything.

Steam just put a check in to see if the game's registered to an account for Unity SP games.

Unity's not a great platform, but it's accessible and you can copy-paste a game together.

It's a good job, but it's gonna be one of those things that's either gonna be a few years before it's done - or a potential classic that's abandoned, like Clandestine where the studio got its cash to fund their next game, or the dev's get bored of working on it, like a thousand kickstarters, or get rich and pat themselves on the back and get a new Islington apartment and a 6 month holiday, returning to say they're letting people have access to the source to fix the bugs if they want *cough madruga cough*.

Most people put in about 8-12 hours before moving on.

Instead of ModDB and Greenlight - we now get rushed to "just good enough" full-price games that are still going to be getting patches for years or remastered in a decade.

The only game I bought this year and I've stuck in thirty or fourty hours playing it through a few times. Will probably still be on the machine for a long time.