The city of Kilcairn is laden with treasures, the trouble is holding on to them. Slinking through the streets and leaping across rooftops, the thieves guild operates from the shadows to liberate confiscated valuables from the city constables, and turn a little profit in doing so. Whether you’re infiltrating solo or teaming up with a friend, the guild only has one rule: don’t get caught.
Thick as Thieves is a solo/cooperative stealth game where your goal is to sneak into a location, avoid traps and guards and carry away as much loot as you can find. Cooperative play was unfortunately unavailable during our early access with the game, so this review-in-progress is from the perspective of solo play only until online servers kick in after launch.
No heist game is complete without access to a hideout, and this is exactly where the adventure begins. From here, you will be able to receive contracts, change your loadout and begin missions. The mission structure for each journey into Kilcairn largely follows the same blueprint: select a contract if you have one available, choose your destination and define which difficulty you want to play. There are only two maps to pick from, those being the Constables Guildhouse and the Elway Manor. There are some thematic differences between them, but they largely play the same in practice so they are mainly setpieces. Contracts provide narrative-based objectives, of which there are 16 in total, and can only be completed in the solo mode.
More often than not, these contracts simply want you to locate a macguffin and provide very little challenge outside of navigating to them. You will also be assigned a randomized map-specific objective that will open up the exfil site when completed. These usually involve tracking down three specific treasures hidden throughout the map, with their locations being revealed by finding clues on scattered missives. I enjoy the fact that these objectives succeed in requiring you to maneuver throughout multiple locations within the map, but I do wish there was a bit more substance to the actual gameplay of it all. Sure, there’s the rudimentary lockpicking mini-game to interact with on some boxes and doors, but beyond that it really boils down to avoiding enemies and feverishly stuffing valuables into your bottomless pockets.
Before venturing out into Kilcairn, you’ll build your loadout within the hideout. There are only two thieves to choose from, with Spider being the default choice as Cameleon is unlocked later. They each sport a unique tool, with Spider taking the crown for movement with a grapple gun and Cameleon wielding a glamour disguise to slip past guards with ease. There are also a small handful of other items that can be equipped, such as the smoke bomb to make an emergency escape or the pick pocket fairy to hit switches from afar. While they won’t dramatically change your playstyle, it was fun to experiment with different tools and find which ones suited me the best.
I say that gear isn’t too important because unfortunately, the enemy AI in this game is not very astute. They are quite easy to avoid, and can be effortlessly dispatched from behind or when landing on them from above. There is an attempt to make them more interactive, with the ability to distract them with thrown bottles or gear, but you rarely need to worry about them. By throwing a bottle into a wall on the other side of the room, they will rapidly sprint at the source of the sound and press their nose into the wall, making it all too easy to either walk by or take them down. The automated turrets also have a laughably small detection zone, and their firing delay makes it a cake walk to just amble up to them and turn them off. The only times I felt any real danger were when I had to face down the dreaded Hauntstable, a ghostly guard that can phase through floors and walls. The lack of challenge isn’t helped by difficulties being locked behind a level grind, meaning it will be a long time before you can take on any real opposition.
Thick as Thieves is a simple package: two maps, two characters and a handful of thief tools. While it is certainly rudimentary, there is still some unmistakable fun to be had for a few hours as you sneak around and loot like a goblin. I’m interested to see if co-op manages to shake up the gameplay or if it ends up being more of a gimmick, but I think either way it could still make for a decent game to play over a weekend with a friend.
