![]() I think having Gloomwood openly explorable is the right call by the developers, since Thief increasingly leaned in that direction as the series went on. Moreover, these individual areas have multiple available pathways to your objective, ventilation ducts and secret passageways that help you slip by your enemies. Admittedly, said exploration is fairly limited in the demo, but you can choose whether to head toward the jailhouse or the dockyards first. Unlike Thief, however, where you only ever see the City is individual chunks, Gloomwood is a single, consistent space that you can freely explore. ![]() Gloomwood’s affectation of Thief’s angular, lo-fi geometry is superb, and you get that same sense of strangeness from its crooked buildings and winding pathways. Its syrupy black darkness is punctuated by sallow lanterns and the alabaster glow of the Moon hovering above. ![]() Like the Dark Project’s unnamed City, Gloomwood is a Victorian Gothic sprawl of metal and stone, where cobbled streets crisscrossed by tight alleys and ginnels thread between towering tenements. This latter point is also important for one of the ways in which Gloomwood differs from Thief. You can also pick up and stack many in-game objects, barrels, crates etc, to create your own pathways through the game world. Closing a door will muffle any sound stemming from behind it, but you can then lean against the wood to “eavesdrop” on guards shuffling around the far side. For example, sound accurately propagates between rooms and through surfaces. ![]() You can move relatively quietly on stone, for example, while metal surfaces will have you clattering around like a professional kitchen.īut Gloomwood also replicates many lesser systems of Thief. Thief’s light crystal is replaced with a waxing and waning moon that shows you how visible you are, while different floor-types affect the loudness of your footsteps. Stealth is both light and sound based, with shadows and silence being your two most effective weapons. Gloomwood dives deep into replicating the base mechanics of Thief for its own purposes. But the house is fortified with a magical barrier that can only be disabled by finding two talismans, one housed in the nearby jail, and the other located somewhere in Gloomwood’s sprawling docks. Your initial objective is to rendezvous with an associate who goes by “G”, hiding in a manor house on Main Street. Gloomwood puts you in the role of a nameless doctor in a city ravaged by a mysterious affliction, which could be a disease, or could be something else. From the couple of hours I’ve spent with Gloomwood’s (now available) demo, the results are potentially very interesting. Developers Dillon Rogers and David Szymanski (who previously created the splendid retro-FPS DUSK) have their own ideas of what it wants to do with Thief’s template. That isn’t to say, however, that Gloomwood exists purely as a tribute. From art to audio to systems, it is a delicately crafted homage to the original stealth masterpiece, one that seeks to remind you of all was great about Looking Glass’ most successful game. But Gloomwood is a pastiche in the original sense of the word, namely elevation through celebration. Today pastiche is often used as a derogatory term, for artworks that are viewed as a lesser version of an earlier, better creation. Gloomwood, however, drinks more deeply from Garrett’s (presumably stolen) cup, entering into the more specific territory of pastiche. The Dishonored series was “inspired” by Thief, taking the broad design ideas and spinning them off with a bunch of other concepts into something largely new. It would be easy to say that Gloomwood is inspired by Thief: The Dark Project. Developer: Dillon Rogers and David Szymanski
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