Gloomwood Is Unbelievably Good (And Unfinished)

thegamer.com:

I love stabbing people, and Gloomwood is basically a stabbing people simulator. You press the left mouse button to pull your sword back, hold it until the blade’s sharp tip gleams, and then release to instantly kill the monstrous guard in front of you. There are a few different kinds of guards prowling the dark hills and shadowy buildings in this new immersive sim from Dillon Rogers (who worked on the retro shooter hit Dusk with his Gloomwood collaborator David Szymanski), but whether your opponent totes a shotgun or an ax, they die the same, collapsing to the ground instantly when your weapon pierces their burgundy robes. Sneaking is the foundation of the imsim, and Gloomwood gives you a deeply satisfying reward at the end of a sneak well snuck.

Stealth has rarely felt this involved either, and you would need to go back to the Thief games, from which Gloomwood draws obvious influence, to see it done with this degree of mechanical complexity. As the mysterious protagonist called The Outsider, you begin the game in a cell at the bottom of a pit in a fortress-like fishery. If you ever hope to escape, you must learn to recognize which of your actions will alert the ever-vigilant guards. That means learning that your watchful opponents will spot your character in full light from a distance, in half-light from up close, and in no light, not at all. It means recognizing that your footsteps are louder on metal than they are on wood, and louder on wood than they are on dirt. It means learning (probably the hard way) that, just because you don’t see any guards nearby doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. Smashing a window will rarely go unnoticed, even if the nearest enemy is a few floors up behind closed doors.

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