Killers and Thieves

Killers and Thieves, developed by Alex Thomas and published by Stoic, is a unique blend of strategy, management, and stealth that challenges players to build and command their own guild of outlaws in a gritty medieval city. At its core, the game is about control—of people, of plans, and of chaos. It tasks you with forming a band of misfits and criminals and leading them to wealth and infamy through carefully planned heists and risky infiltration missions. The city of Greypool serves as both your playground and your battlefield, a place filled with opportunity, danger, and moral ambiguity. It’s a world that thrives on shadows, where success depends not only on skill and timing but also on patience and resourcefulness. Killers and Thieves takes the familiar thrill of stealth games and blends it with the managerial tension of running an organization that constantly teeters between survival and collapse.
The game is divided into two main layers: the strategic guild management phase and the real-time infiltration missions. In the management layer, you recruit new thieves, train them, equip them, and assign them to jobs. Each character comes with distinct traits and skills—some excel at lockpicking or sneaking, while others are better at brute force or agility-based challenges. As the guild master, your responsibility is to balance the risk and reward of every operation. Sending out inexperienced thieves might lead to disaster, while assigning your veterans to every mission could leave the guild broke if something goes wrong. This dynamic creates an engaging sense of tension, where each decision feels weighty and every mistake has consequences. You must manage your finances carefully, ensuring that your rogues are paid and motivated, all while keeping the law at bay. The management aspect feels intuitive yet unforgiving, and its depth gives the game a strategic backbone that goes beyond simple mission planning.
When it’s time to execute a job, Killers and Thieves shifts into its second mode: a 2D side-scrolling stealth game. Here, you control a small group of your guild members as they sneak through mansions, warehouses, and city strongholds, each mission unfolding like a self-contained puzzle. The goal is to collect loot, avoid detection, and escape without casualties. The missions are where the game’s most exciting moments emerge. There’s an undeniable thrill in watching a well-orchestrated plan come together—slipping past guards, unlocking a vault, and vanishing into the night with your pockets full of gold. But just as often, things go wrong. A mistimed command, an overlooked patrol, or a panicked recruit can unravel an entire heist in seconds. This unpredictability is a double-edged sword: it gives the game a sense of realism and tension, but it can also lead to frustration when unclear mechanics or awkward controls turn an elegant plan into chaos.
Visually, Killers and Thieves has a distinct art style that captures the gritty charm of its medieval setting. The hand-drawn environments, filled with muted colors and heavy shadows, create a sense of atmosphere that perfectly complements the game’s theme of moral grayness. The characters, though simply animated, are expressive enough to convey personality through their movements and posture. Every corner of Greypool feels alive, from the dingy taverns where you recruit your crew to the noble estates you infiltrate under the cover of night. The art direction emphasizes simplicity and style over realism, giving the game an illustrated storybook quality that fits its narrative tone. The sound design is equally effective—subtle ambient effects like creaking floorboards and distant voices add to the tension during missions, while the faint music of lutes and drums reinforces the medieval atmosphere without being intrusive.
Despite its strong concept and visual identity, Killers and Thieves is not without flaws. The biggest issue lies in its interface and mission controls, which can feel unintuitive at times. Managing multiple thieves during complex operations requires precise coordination, but the limited AI behavior and occasionally clunky command inputs can make this a challenge. There are moments when a thief fails to follow an order or walks directly into a guard’s line of sight due to an unclear pathfinding rule, resulting in frustration that feels less like player error and more like a mechanical hiccup. Furthermore, the game’s difficulty curve can be punishing, especially early on when resources are scarce and failure often means losing both valuable loot and irreplaceable team members. This harshness will appeal to players who enjoy unforgiving strategy games, but it may alienate those expecting a smoother or more accessible experience.
Repetition is another issue that eventually surfaces. While the thrill of planning heists and executing them never completely fades, the limited variety of mission layouts and objectives can make later stages feel familiar. The cycle of training thieves, preparing for missions, and carrying out heists begins to blur together after several hours. The lack of narrative progression beyond the basic guild expansion also means that motivation must come from the player’s desire to perfect their strategies rather than from evolving storylines or changing environments. This sense of stasis is compounded by the fact that the game rarely rewards long-term success beyond incremental upgrades or new recruits. The world of Greypool remains static, and while its atmosphere is rich, its systems could have benefited from more dynamic interactions or emergent events to keep the experience fresh.
Yet, even with its rough edges, Killers and Thieves possesses a charm that’s hard to dismiss. Its combination of stealth mechanics and guild management creates a satisfying loop that feels both strategic and personal. Every recruit in your guild has a story that unfolds through their successes and failures, and every mission feels like a gamble that reflects your leadership style. When a plan goes off without a hitch, the satisfaction is immense—not just because of the loot you gain, but because it validates your careful planning and risk assessment. It’s a game that rewards patience, adaptability, and an appetite for controlled chaos. Even when things go wrong, there’s a certain thrill in watching your thieves scramble to salvage a doomed operation.
In the end, Killers and Thieves stands as a fascinating experiment that blends genres in creative ways. It’s rough and sometimes unrefined, but its ambition and atmosphere make it memorable. It captures the thrill of leading a secret society of rogues, the tension of a well-planned heist, and the heartbreak of watching your best thief fall to a careless mistake. For players who enjoy strategy games with emergent storytelling and don’t mind a steep learning curve, it offers a rewarding and distinct experience. It’s not a polished gem, but it gleams with potential and personality—a game that, much like its thieves, succeeds through daring rather than perfection.
Rating: 5/10

Steam User 1

Reviewed last year

Killers and Thieves, developed by Alex Thomas and published by Stoic, is a unique blend of strategy, management, and stealth that challenges players to build and command their own guild of outlaws in a gritty medieval city. At its core, the game is about control—of people, of plans, and of chaos. It tasks you with forming a band of misfits and criminals and leading them to wealth and infamy through carefully planned heists and risky infiltration missions. The city of Greypool serves as both your playground and your battlefield, a place filled with opportunity, danger, and moral ambiguity. It’s a world that thrives on shadows, where success depends not only on skill and timing but also on patience and resourcefulness. Killers and Thieves takes the familiar thrill of stealth games and blends it with the managerial tension of running an organization that constantly teeters between survival and collapse.
The game is divided into two main layers: the strategic guild management phase and the real-time infiltration missions. In the management layer, you recruit new thieves, train them, equip them, and assign them to jobs. Each character comes with distinct traits and skills—some excel at lockpicking or sneaking, while others are better at brute force or agility-based challenges. As the guild master, your responsibility is to balance the risk and reward of every operation. Sending out inexperienced thieves might lead to disaster, while assigning your veterans to every mission could leave the guild broke if something goes wrong. This dynamic creates an engaging sense of tension, where each decision feels weighty and every mistake has consequences. You must manage your finances carefully, ensuring that your rogues are paid and motivated, all while keeping the law at bay. The management aspect feels intuitive yet unforgiving, and its depth gives the game a strategic backbone that goes beyond simple mission planning.
When it’s time to execute a job, Killers and Thieves shifts into its second mode: a 2D side-scrolling stealth game. Here, you control a small group of your guild members as they sneak through mansions, warehouses, and city strongholds, each mission unfolding like a self-contained puzzle. The goal is to collect loot, avoid detection, and escape without casualties. The missions are where the game’s most exciting moments emerge. There’s an undeniable thrill in watching a well-orchestrated plan come together—slipping past guards, unlocking a vault, and vanishing into the night with your pockets full of gold. But just as often, things go wrong. A mistimed command, an overlooked patrol, or a panicked recruit can unravel an entire heist in seconds. This unpredictability is a double-edged sword: it gives the game a sense of realism and tension, but it can also lead to frustration when unclear mechanics or awkward controls turn an elegant plan into chaos.
Visually, Killers and Thieves has a distinct art style that captures the gritty charm of its medieval setting. The hand-drawn environments, filled with muted colors and heavy shadows, create a sense of atmosphere that perfectly complements the game’s theme of moral grayness. The characters, though simply animated, are expressive enough to convey personality through their movements and posture. Every corner of Greypool feels alive, from the dingy taverns where you recruit your crew to the noble estates you infiltrate under the cover of night. The art direction emphasizes simplicity and style over realism, giving the game an illustrated storybook quality that fits its narrative tone. The sound design is equally effective—subtle ambient effects like creaking floorboards and distant voices add to the tension during missions, while the faint music of lutes and drums reinforces the medieval atmosphere without being intrusive.
Despite its strong concept and visual identity, Killers and Thieves is not without flaws. The biggest issue lies in its interface and mission controls, which can feel unintuitive at times. Managing multiple thieves during complex operations requires precise coordination, but the limited AI behavior and occasionally clunky command inputs can make this a challenge. There are moments when a thief fails to follow an order or walks directly into a guard’s line of sight due to an unclear pathfinding rule, resulting in frustration that feels less like player error and more like a mechanical hiccup. Furthermore, the game’s difficulty curve can be punishing, especially early on when resources are scarce and failure often means losing both valuable loot and irreplaceable team members. This harshness will appeal to players who enjoy unforgiving strategy games, but it may alienate those expecting a smoother or more accessible experience.
Repetition is another issue that eventually surfaces. While the thrill of planning heists and executing them never completely fades, the limited variety of mission layouts and objectives can make later stages feel familiar. The cycle of training thieves, preparing for missions, and carrying out heists begins to blur together after several hours. The lack of narrative progression beyond the basic guild expansion also means that motivation must come from the player’s desire to perfect their strategies rather than from evolving storylines or changing environments. This sense of stasis is compounded by the fact that the game rarely rewards long-term success beyond incremental upgrades or new recruits. The world of Greypool remains static, and while its atmosphere is rich, its systems could have benefited from more dynamic interactions or emergent events to keep the experience fresh.
Yet, even with its rough edges, Killers and Thieves possesses a charm that’s hard to dismiss. Its combination of stealth mechanics and guild management creates a satisfying loop that feels both strategic and personal. Every recruit in your guild has a story that unfolds through their successes and failures, and every mission feels like a gamble that reflects your leadership style. When a plan goes off without a hitch, the satisfaction is immense—not just because of the loot you gain, but because it validates your careful planning and risk assessment. It’s a game that rewards patience, adaptability, and an appetite for controlled chaos. Even when things go wrong, there’s a certain thrill in watching your thieves scramble to salvage a doomed operation.
In the end, Killers and Thieves stands as a fascinating experiment that blends genres in creative ways. It’s rough and sometimes unrefined, but its ambition and atmosphere make it memorable. It captures the thrill of leading a secret society of rogues, the tension of a well-planned heist, and the heartbreak of watching your best thief fall to a careless mistake. For players who enjoy strategy games with emergent storytelling and don’t mind a steep learning curve, it offers a rewarding and distinct experience. It’s not a polished gem, but it gleams with potential and personality—a game that, much like its thieves, succeeds through daring rather than perfection.
Rating: 5/10
Steam User 1

Reviewed last year

Killers and Thieves
Has a total of 8 trading cards.
Steam User 3

Reviewed last year

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Killers and Thieves

Game Discussion

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