Announcing the release of "Spectral theives"

Hello there!

I have released another game today! This is the first game which uses "Magnum Foundation" which I've released. Not only that but it is also the first game which I have released where the assets were not 100% done by me. I would like to give Joe a shout-out for making the smooth animation to the guards.

I was originally going to release this on the 20th but I delayed the game to fix bugs and polish the levels to the 25th. I delayed it one again to put in some more polish and bug fixes, but I have finally released it.

If you want to know what the game is about, it is about a group of thieves who break into a corrupt man called 'Grinman' who's name was inspired by an inside joke me and Joe have where he draws articulate faces with a large grin (here's an example). I decided to design the guards as a reference to the inside joke, except they aren't smiling. I think it fits them perfectly as they look quite tough.

There are design aspects I often kept in mind when designing the guard routes and levels for the game: One of them was that there are no safe spots (other than the hall entrances) the player can camp in, this would mean that they would need to keep moving if they wanted to be safe. Another design aspect is that violence will not be involved as these thieves are pacifists and are only concerned about stealing things rather than harming let alone killing people. This can give the player interesting new challenges.

I also snuck in a reference to the idea of effective altruism in the ending, so be sure to check that out.

I'm hoping to make a series out of this since I am quite intrigued and passionate about these design concepts. I have additional ideas like improving guard AI to react to player sounds and path-find their way there (which I tried implementing in this game but was too buggy so it had to be abandoned) and tools that can be used to temporarily distract or stun guards.

Perhaps I could make Bounty Hunter's spiritual successor!


Without further ado here is the game.

If you want to download it click here.

That's all from me!