Thick as Thieves

A tight, yet creative stealth game builds a fun whole on top of the genre's conventions.

While Thick as Thieves is a short game lacking in many basic features like rebindable controls, it's an easy game to recommend thanks to its compelling gameplay loop, emphasis on replayability, and a co-op mode.

I remember seeing a preview of Thick as Thieves when it was a PvPvE-focused game. It feels like the shift to single player/co-op stripped away some intangible but important elements. What remains is a fun but limited stealth action game, with lots of potential and room to grow but disappointingly stingy at launch. There’s an old joke about how a restaurant’s food sucked, and also, there wasn’t enough of it. Thick as Thieves is a reasonably-priced $5 game with a solid foundation, but needs more playable characters, maps, depth, and encouragement for creativity. I look forward to checking in from time to time.

Thick As Thieves is a charming co-op stealth experience with clear caveats, that despite its flaws leaves you hungry for the bigger, bolder heist it could become.

Thick as Thieves annoyed me more than I wanted it to, because the good parts are easy to see. The atmosphere is strong, some escapes really do get tense, and the idea of learning a location piece by piece fits the thief fantasy well. But the game keeps getting in its own way. Too many objectives are vague, too many systems are left half-explained, and solo runs start to feel like you are wasting time rather than pulling off a clever heist. Co-op might help with that, but it was not available in the review build, so I can only judge what I played. And as a solo stealth game, Thick as Thieves has promise, but not enough direction or variety to make that promise pay off.

Thick as Thieves feels like a promising idea that never fully materialized. With proper execution, it could have stood among the best in its genre, but its thin content and lack of polish leave it stuck as little more than a concept.

From the same studio that released the unfinished and chastised Underworld Ascendant comes another game prematurely released with the idea of fixing it later. Thick as Thieves is a game made by pioneers of immersive stealth sims, developers who should know better than to release such a clearly incomplete product like this. It’s poorly executed, staggeringly average, and deeply underwhelming, a game really only for those so desperate for stealth-focused ventures they can overlook a bland story, tedious gameplay, and clunky controls atop a content-sparse introductory chapter.