Sleight of Hand blends stealth action with occult noir card-slinging for Xbox and PC

thesixthaxis.com:

RiffRaff Games has revealed Sleight of Hand, a third-person card-slinging occult noir stealth sim – what a description! – coming exclusively to Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2025 – and it’s day one on Xbox Game Pass as well.

Sleight of hand casts the player as Lady Luck (voiced by Debi Mae West), an occult detective and former witch whose one last job is to take down her former Coven in Steeple City. To do so she’ll have to slink from shadow to shadow and wield a deck of cursed cards that can unleash smoke-based magical powers.

You can evaporate into smoke, combine a group of enemies’ fates together (like Dishonored 2’s Domino ability), simply using lethal cards to take out goons, or give them an affliction that will let you sneak past. There’s plenty of card combos to explore, like Hexing a target to tag guards and then use Peekaboo to teleport right behind a Hexed guard, who you can then be taken out silently.

The deck will be customisable through the game, with the intention of engendering replayability through the game with different approaches – will you lean more to stealth with cards like Glimpse and Ignorance? Or be more of a wicked witch with the Hand Cannon card?

RiffRaff Games is headed up by FRAMED creator Joshua Boggs, which was Hideo Kojima’s GOTY 2014. Boggs said, “Making this game has been a long-time dream of mine. It combines my love of Kojima’s brilliant pioneering work in Tactical Espionage Action with Metal Gear Solid and my obsessive desire to push the envelope in making new gameplay experiences. In typical ‘me fashion’ (as the team here would say), I’ve sought to turn the genre on its head with a healthy dose of innovative card play. It’s been a hard road, honestly the hardest project I’ve worked on, but I am so honoured to walk side by side with this team as we push the stealth action genre in a brand new direction.”