It’s 2025, and every video game showcase is a reminder of the current crop of extraction shooters slowly trying to carve a space in the zeitgeist. Even though I doubt the genre will be able to grab the spotlight like battle royale games have, the push for it is already taxing. At the same time, it’s also opening the door to PvPvE ideas with a focus on outsmarting players in fun ways, rather than just aiming at their heads and pulling the trigger before they do.
Thick as Thieves doesn’t hide its influences, but the true vision comes from outside the usual suspects. For starters, it’s introduced as a stealth multiplayer game, which is being developed by OtherSide Entertainment, a studio that has recruited folks ingrained in the immersive sim genre, such as Warren Spector (Deus Ex, Thief: Deadly Shadows) and Paul Neurath (Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II: The Metal Age).
I got to see those influences at display during a hands-off demo at Summer Game Fest. The core loop has players picking from a number of archetype thieves (such as The Spider, who has a grappling hook, or The Chameleon, who can disguise as NPCs), and then landing on a map in search of treasure. There’s a main loot item that everybody is looking for, ensuring a path overlap from the get-go. In the demo, this was the Book of Truth, hidden within a manor.
I saw two runs of this mission, the first being multiplayer with other devs joining in remotely (a commendable effort, considering the wi-fi at the venue was a bit spotty before my appointment), and the second as a solo player against the game’s AI. Out of the two, the immersive sim aspect really came into fruition during the former, with other players’ actions dictating the pace of the heist for everybody else. While approaching the manor, another thief triggered an alarm, basically attracting the guards’ attention toward them. This made for the perfect opportunity to get to the roof and inside the building basically undetected.
The sequence made for a good first glance at The Spider. The meta progression of Thick as Thieves relies on upgrading each class’ existing skills. The grappling hook, for example, can eventually let you aim directly at the rooftop of a second story and zap your way to it. Considering the time pressure of getting your hands on a treasure before others, these upgrades can be the make or break between possibly escaping from another thief’s gaze, or having to find a different route on the go.
Once inside, players have to find environment clues such as written notes to locate the treasure, from hints at its whereabouts to key codes casually laying around. The exact spots and combinations, as well as some other variables on the map are procedurally generated, ensuring that people won’t just memorize paths for subsequent heists.
As soon as somebody gets their hands on the main treasure, a timer begins, a period in which the lucky thief must make a swift escape toward the designated exit. Essentially, that’s when the extraction aspect kicks in. Other players are alerted of actions like this, creating an opportunity to lay down traps next to the door, for example, or try to intercept them along the way. During the demo, the aforementioned guards were quite aggressive towards the thieves, rushing toward them with batons and putting a stop to all three of them before anybody could exit and cash in the prize.
The second run featured The Chameleon who can, in contrast to The Spider’s more agility-based moves, disguise as a fellow guard. It’s a valuable skill, but it also requires you to get close to them, which can be tricky. Disguises aren’t permanent either, and depend on a timer on screen.
Once you’ve gotten your hands on your desired disguise, you also need to play the part. The guards of the manor, for example, don’t have many reasons to hang out near a bakery or a street market. Appearances like this can stand out to other players paying attention to their surroundings. This also applies to actions like lockpicking, which, yes, has its own minigame. On the other hand, wearing disguises isn’t just for hiding your presence as a thief, but also to get close enough to fellow guards and steal a key, for example, getting rid of the need to lockpick entirely.
Both runs of the demo were an intriguing showcase of the strengths of Thick as Thieves, thanks largely to that influence from immersive sim games. Weather conditions can play a big part in how you approach heists, with thunderstorms masking much of the noise you’d normally make, allowing for more aggressive pushes. The use of certain tools, like a charming cuckoo trap, can either alert people of a thief’s presence entering a room by attaching it to a door like a booby trap or distract guards if you use it as a throwable item.
As it’s the norm with the genre, the experience you get from runs lives and dies from the ideas that other people come up with, and the ways you all outsmart each other during matches. In its current state, it seems most of the tools to make it a compelling playground are set in place. While its future as a multiplayer game in the current landscape is uncertain, it’s refreshing to see studios incentivizing and rewarding a more methodical player behavior. Even if your grand prize from a heist is a wheel of cheese.
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