You always have an out, unless you've already spent it
In the fog-lit alleyways of a magical 1910s Scotland, Thick as Thieves asks what it means to be clever under pressure — to read a room, trust a partner, and vanish before the world catches up with you. Developed as a co-op stealth heist experience, the game finds its philosophical footing in the tension between patience and improvisation, between the thrill of the plan and the chaos of its unraveling. IGN Southeast Asia finds it a genuinely rewarding exercise in ingenuity, one whose greatest limitation is simply that it does not offer enough of itself to satisfy the appetite it creates.
- The game's core loop — crouch, observe, improvise, escape — generates genuine adrenaline, especially in co-op where split-second coordination between partners can mean the difference between a clean getaway and an electrocuted corpse.
- Hauntstables, the game's ghost-constable enemies who phase through walls and cannot be subdued, introduce a layer of unpredictable menace that occasionally tips from thrilling into frustrating when they glitch into patrol loops.
- With only two available levels — the Constable Guildhall and Elway Manor — the game risks wearing out its welcome, as repeated runs surface the same environmental notes and familiar corridors that begin to feel like a rehearsal rather than a heist.
- The two playable thieves, the Spider and the Chameleon, offer meaningfully different approaches to the same spaces, and rotating objectives with adjustable difficulty work hard to sustain replayability across what little content exists.
- Co-op play emerges as the game's truest expression of itself, transforming a competent solo stealth experience into something warmer, funnier, and far more alive — a reminder that the best heists are never run alone.
Thick as Thieves is set in Kilcairn, a fictional Scottish city where the 1910s industrial age hums alongside genuine magic. Players join the Thieves' Guild by stealing the Vistara Diamond — an artifact that does far more than glitter, revealing guards, exposing traps, and unlocking hidden passages. The story unfolds quietly through mission briefings and notes discovered mid-job, threading together the city's history and a heist that gradually outgrows its original ambitions. In co-op, it's easy to miss the details while staying focused on not getting caught.
The stealth mechanics are well-worn but satisfying: crouch through darkness, extinguish light sources, pick locks, and manage a small arsenal of tools including smoke grenades and magical fairies that distract or pickpocket guards. Players choose between two thieves — the Spider, armed with a grappling hook for vertical traversal, and the Chameleon, who can disguise herself as a constable. Both reward tactical thinking, and the game is equally comfortable with patient stealth or calculated bursts of speed.
The most distinctive enemies are the Hauntstables — cursed ghost-constables who phase through walls, cannot be knocked out, and punish contact with instant death. They are the game's sharpest threat and its most inconsistent one, occasionally glitching into loops when they encounter unconscious guards they cannot move. Turning on a gramophone helps, since Hauntstables apparently despise bagpipes. Running helps more.
The game's two levels — the Constable Guildhall and Elway Manor — are generously designed, multi-story spaces with shifting routes, hidden paths, and enough variables between runs to sustain genuine mastery. But two levels is a thin foundation. Repeated visits surface the same environmental notes and the same corridors, and the sense of discovery fades faster than it should.
Co-op rescues much of this. Splitting up, coordinating takedowns, reviving a partner beside their dropped loot rather than watching them respawn empty-handed — these moments carry a warmth and momentum that solo play simply cannot replicate. Thick as Thieves is a clever, charming heist game that earns its best moments honestly. It just needed more rooms to rob.
You're crouched in the dark, the Vistara Diamond heavy in your pocket, and the Magic Door is thirty seconds away. The guards at the Constable Guildhall have spotted you twice in the last minute—once you slipped past with a smoke grenade, once you simply ran. Now you're moving through the final corridor, your partner covering the eastern passage, and the timer is bleeding down. Ten seconds left. You make it through. Contract complete, pockets full, and the kind of adrenaline that makes you want to do it all over again. This is when Thick as Thieves finds its rhythm: in those moments of improvisation and escape, when the level's geometry and your own ingenuity conspire to get you out alive.
The game is set in Kilcairn, a fictional Scottish city where magic and industry collide in the 1910s. Your entry into the Thieves' Guild comes by way of theft—you steal the Vistara Diamond to prove yourself worthy. But the Diamond is more than a jewel. It reveals nearby guards, exposes hidden traps, illuminates treasures, and unlocks passages to places where the real prizes live. Pursuing the Diamond's secrets becomes a thread that pulls you through twelve hours of story, one that weaves together the city's history, a powerful family's past, and a heist that grows larger than anyone anticipated. The narrative doesn't announce itself loudly. Most of it arrives through mission briefings and scattered notes you find mid-job, clues about what you're stealing and why it matters. You have to look for it, especially in co-op, where your partner might miss the details while you're both focused on not getting caught.
The stealth mechanics are familiar ground for anyone who's played a sneaking game before. You crouch under trip wires, avoid pressure plates, disable rotating turrets, and stay out of sight of magical sensors. Most of your time is spent moving slowly through darkness, extinguishing candles and lamps to maintain cover. When you find something worth stealing, a lock-picking minigame stands between you and the loot. The real objectives come in two flavors: contracts that require you to steal a specific item, and heists that ask you to reach a monetary threshold or find particular targets. You can pursue both simultaneously, though the contract is the one that truly matters. Guards are predictable in their patrol patterns, but alert to sound and sight. If they spot you, they investigate. If they catch you, they electrocute you until you're dead. Your options are to sneak up and knock them unconscious, or to use tools like smoke grenades and magical fairies—the Insult Fairy distracts them, the Pickpocket Fairy lifts their keys—to create an escape route. Running is always viable. So is going over them entirely, if you have the right equipment.
You choose between two thieves: the Spider, who starts with a grappling hook for vertical movement, and the Chameleon, who can disguise herself as a guard. The Spider wins on pure utility—why walk past an obstacle when you can swing over it?—but both characters reward smart play. The game encourages you to think tactically, to weigh the cost of each action. Sometimes stealth means patience. Sometimes it means sprinting past a magical eye before it locks onto you, or hitting a guard with a smoke grenade and moving fast. The system rewards both caution and calculated aggression.
Then there are the Hauntstables: cursed constables doomed to police work for eternity. They're ghosts, which means they phase through walls and floors, can't be knocked unconscious, and hurt you on contact. They're the game's most punishing obstacle, and they're also its most frustrating. They can get stuck in loops when they encounter unconscious guards they can't move, refusing to resume their patrol. It's occasionally funny, often annoying, but rarely game-breaking. The game suggests that Slither Sap has a "strange interaction" with them, though in practice it doesn't seem to work. What does work is turning on gramophones—Hauntstables despise bagpipes—and running. You respawn when they kill you, though you lose any loot you haven't banked at scattered stash points, which matters when you're racing a timer.
The game's real strength lies in its two levels: the Constable Guildhall and Elway Manor. Both are sprawling, multi-story spaces packed with hidden paths and multiple routes to any objective. They shift slightly between visits as certain passages open and close. Combined with your character's unique abilities, the rotating objectives, and difficulty settings that add guards and traps, these two spaces never quite feel exhausted. There's a satisfaction in mastering them, in knowing exactly how to navigate from point A to point B. The downside is obvious: two levels is thin. Finding the same explanatory notes repeatedly—like the one about Hauntstables and bagpipes—becomes tedious when you're searching for mission-specific clues. Finishing a contract only to return to the same level for the next job starts to feel repetitive.
But the co-op transforms the experience. Splitting up to cover more ground, coordinating takedowns, having your partner revive you at the last second—these moments carry a joy that solo play can't match. Getting picked up next to your dropped loot beats respawning in a safe zone. Yes, co-op makes the game easier, but it's so much more fun that the trade-off feels worth it. You can always increase the difficulty if you want the challenge back. Thick as Thieves is a charming heist that sings in the right moments, with clever level design and rewarding mechanics. It just needed more of itself.
Citações Notáveis
Hauntstables are going to send you to an early grave more than once— Reviewer's assessment of the game's most punishing enemy
The most annoying thing about Hauntstables is that they get stuck in patrol loops when encountering unconscious guards they cannot move— Technical observation about enemy AI limitations
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the co-op feel so essential to this game? Couldn't you just play it solo?
You could, but you'd lose something vital. The game is designed around two people coordinating—one covering a guard while the other picks a lock, or splitting up to hit two objectives at once. Solo, it becomes a puzzle you're solving alone. With a friend, it becomes a conversation.
And the Hauntstables—they seem like they're fighting against the game's own design.
They are. Everything else in the game respects your agency, gives you options. Hauntstables just chase you until you die or find a gramophone. They're the one enemy that doesn't play by the rules the game established.
Is that a flaw, or is that the point?
Honestly, it's both. They're frustrating, but they're also the only thing that makes you panic. Every other encounter, you can think your way out. With a Hauntstable, you just run.
Two levels seems like a lot of repetition.
It is. But the levels are so well-designed that you don't notice until you've played them a dozen times. Then you start seeing the same notes, the same patrol routes, and you realize you've learned everything there is to learn.
So what keeps you coming back?
The co-op, honestly. Playing with someone else means every run is slightly different because they make different choices. And there's something about that last-second escape, both of you sprinting for the exit with seconds left, that makes you want to do it again.