Gloomwood - Thief-ish stealth horror game from New Blood Interactive - now available on Early Access

[Morgoth]

http://gloomwood.com




https://af.gog.com/game/gloomwood?as=1649904300

Spoiler

Developed by Dillon Rogers and David Szymanski (DUSK).

I'm surprised there isn't a thread about this already. No idea when this comes out, but I love those video clips:




There's more on the channel.

At least we get this after Shock 3 was killed shelved.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

AI looks dumb as fuck, character design is terrible.
But thats probably result of being in early stages of development.
Might be gud game I guess? Even though nothing they showed so far is gud.

 

[Infinitron]

Huh, this has apparently been in development since 2014(!) https://jollyrogers99.tumblr.com

It didn't look like a Thief mod then.

 

[vonAchdorf]

If you are "sneaking about" you shouldn't open doors with the intention to make as much noise as possible.

And the AI guys have to be silent undead - two human guards shouldn't fall for that trick consecutively without communicating.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

The AI is super basic.

*bottle passes rigth in front of him*
*checks the spot where it crashed instead of the place from where it was thown*




Splinter Cell did this in 2005 guys.
Also why not make something that looks more like The Dark Mod?

 

[Hobo Elf]

It looks more like a puzzle than a stealth game.

 

[DalekFlay]

Man, there's inspiration and then there's thievery. Though I guess that's appropriate.

 

[DeepOcean]

Pretty cool, looks alot like Thief and that is a good thing. Those are just test videos though, not enough information to claim anything. I hope for a Thief inspired game but dunno if we can expect that.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Why should I get this when I can play Dark Mod for free?

 

[thesecret1]

Thief, you say? Nay. Their page clearly describes the game as "survival horror" and the footage posted only confirms that.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Where enemies as stupid in the original Thief? Could you lok them 1 by 1 by throwing empty bottle inside a cell?

 

[throwaway69420]

First video had me very excited but the second deflated it quickly. While the green eyed enemies could work as a sparse late game enemy, their animations are quite poor and unintimidating, and their AI is too slow to be considered a threat. Ambience did remind me of Thief but those mobs need a bit of an overhaul.

 

[udm]

Where enemies as stupid in the original Thief? Could you lok them 1 by 1 by throwing empty bottle inside a cell?

They were stupid for sure, especially at release (I distinctly remember that in pre-patched TDP, you could shoot at guards and have them search for you, only for them to declare it was just rats 2 minutes later and go back into relaxed state). However, by 1998 standards, I considered the AI to be astounding. Today, I'd expect more, but sadly most games haven't evolved in AI.

 

[Curratum]

Been following the dev on twitter for some time. Looks promising, we'll see.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, the textures and objects certainly look like Thief. Even the architecture looks like it was built with dromed.

But the AI is even derpier than the exploitable Thief AI, and the green eyes are a weird modern telegraphing technique that shouldn't be necessary (those things essentially indicate the enemy's sightlines; Thief never had any such blatantly obvious and artificial indicators). Also, the sound seems quite lacking. These AI enemies barely make any footstep sounds, at least none as audible as the original Thief's. And their growls are very indistinct, too.

 

[Multidirectional]

But the AI is even derpier than the exploitable Thief AI, and the green eyes are a weird modern telegraphing technique that shouldn't be necessary (those things essentially indicate the enemy's sightlines; Thief never had any such blatantly obvious and artificial indicators). Also, the sound seems quite lacking. These AI enemies barely make any footstep sounds, at least none as audible as the original Thief's. And their growls are very indistinct, too.

At least there's this:



Hopefully this is just in very early stage and to be massively improved. The green eyes need to go. Also that green object highlighting is ugly as shit, they should just copy the style Thief used for it.

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Morgoth]

But the AI is even derpier than the exploitable Thief AI, and the green eyes are a weird modern telegraphing technique that shouldn't be necessary (those things essentially indicate the enemy's sightlines; Thief never had any such blatantly obvious and artificial indicators). Also, the sound seems quite lacking. These AI enemies barely make any footstep sounds, at least none as audible as the original Thief's. And their growls are very indistinct, too.

At least there's this:



Hopefully this is just in very early stage and to be massively improved. The green eyes need to go. Also that green object highlighting is ugly as shit, they should just copy the style Thief used for it.

The dev has already stated in the comment section that the green shit can be tapered down or disabled.

 

[LESS T_T]

Gameplay and interview:

 

[Morgoth]

My big fear from that short gameplay demo is dumb AI. Thief had dumb AI too, but you couldn't shotgun them taffers and leave their corpses just lay around without penalties.

But we shall see. I'm a sucker for slow methodological gameplay and brown-greyish textures, so it will be a D1P anyway.

 

[Onionguy]

Gameplay and interview:

Looks pretty damn impressive. I am also slightly concerned about how overpowered you seem to be in this game, but to be fair it's just a pre-alpha.

 

[RoSoDude]

Some more gameplay from the same (tutorial?) level. Mostly consists of Dave Oshry complaining that Dillon changed something from the previous devbuild, heh. Starts around 2:14 if the timestamp below doesn't work for you.

 

[Wunderbar]

Well it looks more like a regular survival horror with stealth elements rather than a Thief's successor.

Also, why is the shotgun both break-action and pump-action? That's not how shotguns work.

 

[agentorange]

Superficially it looks like a shameless ripoff of Thief, while gameplay wise it looks more like Sir You Are Being Hunted.

 

[RoSoDude]

Also, why is the shotgun both break-action and pump-action? That's not how shotguns work.