I'll admit, I don't particularly enjoy stealth games. It's not that they aren't fun, it's just that I find them incredibly frustrating. Honestly, I'm just not good at them, which is why I'm particularly excited for Size Five Games newly announced title, The Swindle.
Coming to Steam, Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Vita, and Wii U in 'early Summer 2015', The Swindle is developer Dan Marshall's "answer to all the stuff I find frustrating in stealth titles."
It's a Steampunk cybercrime game in which every level is unique. You break into procedurally-generated buildings , try to hack all their computers and empty their bank accounts, and then leg it back to your airship. If you succeed, you can spend cash on fancy steampunk gadgets and bio-mods like bombs, quad-jumping, teleportation, and other tools that'll help you pull off bigger, more elaborate heists.
So how does it make stealth games less frustrating?
As Marshall explains, there's no following people from a distance or listening in on guards' conversations. If things go wrong, the alarm bells start ringing, but all that happens is the game switches from "sneaky-sneaky stealthy fun to an against-the-clock action race." Rather than frustratingly punishing you for a misstep, cash will start draining from the computers, so you'll need to act quickly and hack what's left.
"It’s a little bit 'best of both worlds'; you’re a stealthy burglar, and when things (inevitably) go wrong, you’re a full-on action hero," Marshall says.
"Importantly, how you play is kind of up to you. You can either hack doors or blast your way through, your choice. But the game never punishes you for choosing one path over another – if you want to complete the final swindle, you’ll eventually need pretty much every gadget in your toolkit."
As this is Marshall's first game developed for consoles, Curve Digital is handling the publishing of non-Steam versions. While The Swindle has some screenshots, new gameplay footage is said to be coming, hopefully sooner rather than later.
[PS Blog]
