Funny how little amount of stealth games I play, because it's one of my favorite types of games alongside survival horror. Don't worry about that tho because in a few weeks I'll be playing the shit out of Metal Gear Solid, but I digress.
While the greater issue with most of the games in the genre is that they give too many gameplay features, this one has the exact opposite problem. I know that it's an amateur project with an uneven price on Steam, and it does have a pretty fun art style for something of that pedestal, but it straight-up lacks some of the most fundamental aspects of what makes a stealth game good. For one, ammo is shockingly scarce. The classic trick of shooting light sources to hide in the shadows is very much present and NPCs are killed instantly with headshots, but you're generally given just 10 bullets from the beginning, and ammo boxes are almost nowhere to be found. In fact, there's just nothing to explore besides the main objective. Searching behind every nook and cranny doesn't offer any results besides finding your target, and all you have to do at that point is just killing them while they're already down. Guards can still be taken down by holding them hostage and then choking them, but for one, doing so doesn't grant you anything so you're better off sneaking further unless they get in the way, and two, this gets repetitive real quickly since the enemy AI seems to hardly spot you so it's not like getting to that point is all that difficult. When you do get spotted, it's pretty much game over from there on out because the guards have this weird sixth sense by which they always seem to know where you are hiding, I even had two of them stand still at a corner right next to me and start firing at the wall because they just hadn't reached the angle to hit me. Once you die, there is no save system to back you up so you have to do the whole mission all over again. It's not as infuriating as it sounds because each mission is relatively short, but doing the process all the way from scratch each time gets boring after the third attempt because the only major difference is the route you're taking. The gameplay just kinda boils down to the bare minimum of how these games work, and additional features to immerse yourself further into the stealth are severely lacking.
While I refunded this game within just 45 minutes, I learned a lot from its subpar design. I wouldn't be complaining if niche games like this dominated the home store page.
While the greater issue with most of the games in the genre is that they give too many gameplay features, this one has the exact opposite problem. I know that it's an amateur project with an uneven price on Steam, and it does have a pretty fun art style for something of that pedestal, but it straight-up lacks some of the most fundamental aspects of what makes a stealth game good. For one, ammo is shockingly scarce. The classic trick of shooting light sources to hide in the shadows is very much present and NPCs are killed instantly with headshots, but you're generally given just 10 bullets from the beginning, and ammo boxes are almost nowhere to be found. In fact, there's just nothing to explore besides the main objective. Searching behind every nook and cranny doesn't offer any results besides finding your target, and all you have to do at that point is just killing them while they're already down. Guards can still be taken down by holding them hostage and then choking them, but for one, doing so doesn't grant you anything so you're better off sneaking further unless they get in the way, and two, this gets repetitive real quickly since the enemy AI seems to hardly spot you so it's not like getting to that point is all that difficult. When you do get spotted, it's pretty much game over from there on out because the guards have this weird sixth sense by which they always seem to know where you are hiding, I even had two of them stand still at a corner right next to me and start firing at the wall because they just hadn't reached the angle to hit me. Once you die, there is no save system to back you up so you have to do the whole mission all over again. It's not as infuriating as it sounds because each mission is relatively short, but doing the process all the way from scratch each time gets boring after the third attempt because the only major difference is the route you're taking. The gameplay just kinda boils down to the bare minimum of how these games work, and additional features to immerse yourself further into the stealth are severely lacking.
While I refunded this game within just 45 minutes, I learned a lot from its subpar design. I wouldn't be complaining if niche games like this dominated the home store page.