We made it to the Magic Door with less than 10 seconds left. A couple of last-second run-ins with the guards that populate the Constable Guildhall took time we didn’t have, but we managed to escape – our contract completed, our mission objective fulfilled, and our pockets loaded down with the ill-gotten gains we’d liberated from the cops. Not a bad day’s work. Moments like this are when Thick as Thieves sings: sneaking out of a tough situation, figuring out a new way to get where you need to be, a last second escape with zeroes on the clock. Combine co-op play, a couple of thieves with unique toolkits, excellent level design that constantly forces you to make interesting decisions, and a surprisingly compelling story, and Thick as Thieves has enough to keep you coming back for one last job. I just wish there was more of it. (And that I could kill Hauntstables. If the Hauntstables have no enemies, I have departed this Earth.)
Thick as Thieves is set in 1910s Kilcairn, a fictional Scottish city that meets at the collision of magic and technology. You break into (get it? Do you get it?) the Thieves’ Guild by stealing the Vistara Diamond. But the diamond ain’t just a big shiny rock on a stick; it reveals nearby guards, hidden traps, and even treasures – and wilder stuff like hidden magic doors where the really good loot is kept. Uncovering the nature of the Diamond means uncovering the history of the city itself, and a prominent family who lived there, and pretty soon what started as a simple heist becomes a small part of a much bigger story that took me around 12 hours to tie the knot on.
Thick as Thieves’ setup – get in, get what you came for, get out – means there isn’t a lot of what you’d consider a traditional story. Most of it is told though text-based communiques that hand out your mission objectives or congratulate you on a job well done, and scattered notes that provide clues about the location of (or security surrounding) the things you’re there to snatch mid-mission. What’s here is compelling, but you kind of have to look for it, and a good chunk of it is especially easy to miss if you’re playing co-op – which you absolutely should be if you have a friend who wants to get grabby with other peoples’ things.
Thieving effectively means being aware of your surroundings and not getting caught, so if you’ve ever played a stealth game, you’ll be at home here. Crouching under trip wires, avoiding pressure plates, turning off rotating turrets, and avoiding magic eyes are the name of the game. Most of the time you’ll be crouched, moving slowly as you snuff out candles, turn off lamps, and try to make as little noise as possible. The actual thieving comes in the form of a cute little minigame to pick locks in order to open doors or snag treasures secured in display cases. You’ll also collect clues that lead you to each mission’s big score or its story-based contract, both of which are active at once. The former could be anything from stealing enough stuff to hit a certain monetary threshold or finding specific items, while the latter requires you to “acquire” an object that only appears if you’re on that contract. It’s best to do both, but you’re not out of luck if you only do one (preferably the contract).
Avoiding traps is simple enough if you pay attention (or use the Diamond, which makes things much easier), but the guards themselves are another thing entirely. Their patterns are predictable, but they’re alert to most sounds and even catching a glimpse of you will cause them to investigate. You’re a thief, not a fighter, and if they catch you, they’ll tell you to stop resisting (even when you’re not) before zapping you with lightning until you’re dead. If you want them gone (and you do), your best bet is to sneak up behind them and knock them out.
If they see you first, you’re not entirely defenseless. A smoke grenade will stun them long enough for you to put them to sleep, and you can always run. Plus, completing contracts and absconding with loot will level you up, giving you access to consumable items like the Insult Fairy, which distracts guards by doing exactly what you’d think, or the Pickpocket Fairy, which does… exactly what you’d think, and is super handy when you want a guard’s key without getting near him. So yeah, guards can be annoying, but the best part is you always have an out (unless you’ve already spent it), and unless you trigger a trap that locks you in a room with one, you can always run.
And if you’re smart, you can just avoid them entirely. Each thief has four slots of usable items: one is reserved for the Diamond, two are for any combination of smoke grenades, fairies, and other useful tools, and the final is unique to that thief. Thick as Thieves has two: the Spider, which is what you start with, and the Chameleon, which you unlock. The former has a grappling hook that can allow you to pull yourself up, down, and all around, and the latter can copy the form of a guard and use it to walk around in disguise.
The Chameleon is cool and suave and has some great voice lines (“and a penny for the vicar!”), but the Spider has all of that and a grappling hook, so she wins. Why walk past an annoying guard when you can just go over him, you know? What I like most, no matter who you choose, is that Thick as Thieves is always encouraging you to play smart and make good decisions. You’ll start off very cautious, but playing smart also means realizing that guard is in your path and the fastest way to where you need to be is to bomb his ass with a smoke grenade and choke him out. Yeah, being stealthy is great, but I like that you’re rewarded for playing offense and taking smart risks, too – like sprinting to get past a magic eye before it spots you.
But all the tricks in the world will only get you so far. Eventually, you’ll run into Hauntstables (incredible name, by the way), who are Constables cursed to be cops for all eternity. Some of the lore frames this as punishment, which feels valid for choosing to be a very intentionally corrupt cop, but nobody should be forced to be a cop forever. I feel for the Hauntstables when they complain about waiting forever for a cup of coffee or say it feels like they’ve been on this shift forever because, well, they have. But man they’re a pain.
The big deal with Hauntstables is that they’re ghosts, so they can go through walls, ascend through floors, descend through roofs, and can’t be knocked out. They also hurt you if they get too close, so if you are spotted, you need to move. Getting away from them is tricky, and you mostly either need a smoke grenade to stun them or clear path to book it down to have a chance. Sometimes you’ll die not because one spotted you, but because you were low on health and he just happened to walk by. Slither Sap, one of your equipable items, allegedly has a “strange interaction” with them, but I have thrown a lot of Slither Sap at these cats and nothing seemed to happen. What does work, though, is turning on gramophones. Hauntstables do not like bagpipes. Their loss is your gain, but these guys are going to send you to an early grave more than once. Luckily, you do respawn, just without whatever loot you snagged (though you can bank your spoils at certain single-use stashes scattered across the map), which is dangerous when you’re up against a timer.
The most annoying thing about Hauntstables, though, is that they get stuck. Normal guards will see their buddies unconscious on the ground and pick them up before searching for you and then eventually going about their business if you stay hidden, but Hauntstables can’t pick people up, so they can get stuck in an infinite loop of “see guy on the ground, be shocked, be unable to do anything about it, see guy on the ground” and so on. This is funny, but it also means that Hauntstable won’t go back to his patrol path, which is a pain if you’re trying to get past the area he happens to be stuck in. Usually, this eventually resolves (especially if you die), but it’s annoying, though never gamebreaking.
What carries Thick as Thieves, aside from the charming art, roguish… rogues, and general Cool Vibes are the levels. There are unfortunately only two: the aforementioned Constable Guildhall and Elway Manor, but they’re both so good that I can almost forgive it. Each is a multi-story behemoth ripe with hidden paths and tons of ways to get where you need to be, and they do change from time to time as some paths open and others close. Combine that with your thief’s skills and the ever-changing objectives you’ll have when you enter each level (as well as difficulty options that add more traps and guards), and I never got bored.
There’s a joy to mastering these levels and knowing exactly how to get where you need to be, but there are a couple downsides. Certain notes – like the ones that explain that Hauntstables don’t like gramophones – appear on the map every time, which can be irritating when you’re looking for mission or contract-specific clues and you find one you’ve seen before. It’s also just kind of a bummer to finish a contract and know that the next one will either send you to the other level or back to where you just were. Variety is the spice of theft, after all.
My favorite thing about Thick as Thieves, though, is the online co-op. It’s fun to split up and explore separate areas, coordinate to take out a guard, or have your buddy save you at the last moment, and vice-versa. And getting picked up next to the stuff you dropped is way better than respawning in a safe area. It does make levels easier, but it’s so much more fun to play with a friend that I kind of don’t care. Besides, you can always crank up the difficulty setting if you’re into that.
