The Swindle
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The Swindle is a steampunk cybercrime caper about breaking into buildings, hacking their systems, stealing all their cash, and quickly running away again before the police show up. All the buildings you’ll be robbing are randomly-generated, so you’ll never get the same level twice. Meanwhile, from the safety of your rickety airship up in Outer Space, you can modify your thief with new skills, tools, and all manner of advanced technological horrors, allowing you to take on bigger buildings with better security, for gargantuan rewards! Have you got what it takes to pull off The Swindle?
Steam User 153
The Swindle is a difficult game, make no mistake about it. Sometimes the difficulty stems intentionally from its design, and at other times it's due to kinks inherent to the way it was designed. Over the course of 100 in-game days you'll sneak, steal, clobber and die your way across a Victorian Steampunk interpretation of London, on a mission to thwart the government's ultimate surveillance tool. Fail and you'll be forever out of the thieving game, succeed, though, and you'll be free to rob from the rich, the poor and whoever else you come across.
Having caught word that Johnny Law is introducing aforementioned all-seeing surveillance technology known as "The Devil's Basilisk" you and your band of thieves resolve to steal it. However, you'll have no chance of infiltrating the Basilisk if you and your crew have no working capital - you've got to start at the bottom to get to the top after all.
Starting in the slums, you'll break into people's homes to steal their savings - you won't make a killing, but the money you earn will help you buy the upgrades required to pull off more daring and dangerous jobs.
Just like Spelunky, each level you visit has been procedurally generated, meaning you'll never know what's coming next.
Money bags, robotic steampunk guards, banking computers, surveillance cameras and other devious traps will always be in different places, keeping you on your toes . Rushing in for the steal is never the best option - it's still viable, but never as rewarding.
Typically, levels play out in the same fashion:
*Survey the building from all angles
*Identify surveillance points and enemies
*Find where the cash and computers are
*Plan escape route
I found myself using the above formula throughout The Swindle, to varying degrees of success.
Enemies each have their own field of vision, breach it and the alarms will go off and the police will shortly be on the scene. Cue erratic music as you attempt to batter enemies, drain the cash from computers using a button-mashing QTE, and then make your way back to your escape pod. You'll face stiff resistance from the coppers as they sweep the building, and ocassionally crash through it in their airship.
If you fail a day will pass and another thief will take your place, succeed, however, and you'll return to your airship with bags of loot.
In the early stages of the game I found myself stuck in a vicious losing cycle :
*Identify cash
*Identify enemies
*Identify cash I can't reach because I don't have the prerequisite skills.
*Trip alarm.
*Die.
I was stuck in that loop for longer than I'd like to admit, a fact that made me resent the game's core design ever so slightly.
The beginning stages reward your skill with only paltry amounts of cash, a mechanic which brought me great displeasure. To afford even the most basic upgrades you'll need to successfully drain each stage of as much cash as you can. No easy feat given the lack of a tutorial.
Be it intentionally or unintentionally, The Swindle dangles larger cash payoffs in front of you, despite your inability to reach them. Fortunately, acquiring the hacking skill and a handful of bombs changes things for the better, allowing you a degree of freedom in how you approach things.
New challenges and enemies constantly shake things up, and you'll need to alter the way you play accordingly if you want to relieve your victims of 100% of their cash.
The game expands significantly as you acquire more loot. Enemies become faster and more abundent, security fixtures like cameras and drones appear, and more possibilities for mischief present themselves. The Swindle never closes a door without opening a window, so to speak. Likewise, your squad of master thieves also get an upgrade with better hacking abilities, stronger attacks, more bombs and jumping skills. It's up to you where you put your hard-earned (!) money.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what upgrades you have though, the game, by its very nature, can be completely unfair. On more than a few occasions I found myself completely unable to access computers due to there being either traps below or exploding/spiky enemies that kill on touch. Your experience may differ, but the game's procedural generation may require some fine-tuning.
When I wasn't tossing my controller across the room out of pure frustration, I was having a great time. Once you have breached The Swindle's tough outer shell it comes into its own. With a few upgrades on board you'll be ducking, diving and robbing your way from the slums, to luxury stately homes. Extracting the stealth gameplay of Stealth Inc and injecting it into Spelunky is the closest comparison I can give, and it works exceptionally well.
The simple gameplay loop of stealing, upgrading and moving on to the next location to pull off even bigger heists was compelling enough to keep me returning for more, even when I wasn't doing too good. The promise of a shiny new toy to play with, and the resultant evolution of each level, meant I never got bored, even when I felt the game wasn't being entirely fair.
If you can forgive its minor issues The Swindle is sure to make off with a little piece of your heart.
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Reviewed with a promotionsal copy. Original review here:
Steam User 59
The Swindle is a game about taking things that don’t belong to you. You enter a randomly generated level, try to get through without being seen, and get out with as much cash as you can carry. You don’t have to get it all, but you get a sizable bonus if you do. If you die, you lose your cash and the thief you were using and get no second chance at that map. You use that cash on a variety of upgrades like more map information, more jumps, faster hacking, bombs, access to harder map types, and smoke screens, to name a few. You get 100 days, each representing an attempt to earn enough cash to get up to the titular highest and hardest map type. 100 days might seem like a lot of time but when an attempt can less than 30 seconds if you slip up or get impatient, it starts to feel more like a doomsday clock.
The Swindle is hard. Not cheap, not random, just hard. It will punish you swiftly and severely for impatience or poor decision making. It’s hard, but not unfair.
Every single one of my several hundred deaths were my fault. I jumped too soon, I tried to squeeze in one more hit even when I knew my melee attack had a small cooldown, or I tried to overextend myself in my greed to get all the cash in a level.
New enemy types and map features are introduced with minimal tutorials, keeping the flow of the game intact and the sense of discovery a reward for the player's efforts. When you buy clearance to visit the second map type, you better have hacking level 2 or you might not even get into the building as locked doors are now a thing. You better have bombs by the third map type because some of the best loot will be sealed behind a wall. The rewards are exponentially greater as is the potential for failure.
Unlike most games that get easier as you get more tools, The Swindle responds in kind with challenges that force you to utilize those tools in split second decisions and ups the skill ceiling. If you like games that constantly challenge you from start to finish, this one is for you.
Steam User 92
The Swindle is a stealth based rogue-like heist game, being developed by Size Five Games and releasing in July 2015. The game can be related to a combination of Spelunky and Payday of sorts.
Gameplay premise is simple, break into a house and rob as much money as you can whilst remaining hidden from guards and avoiding traps. You have 100 days to reach your goal of running a final heist run called “The Swindle” on a police station. The 100 days counts down each time you complete a heist. In between each heist you are able to upgrade your skills, equipment and purchase access to the next stage of stages. All of your purchases stick with you right until the end, so it doesn’t matter if you die or get caught on one character, as you will just get a new one with the same skill set as before. This is my favourite aspect of any rogue-like as it always feels like you are progressing. In each building, you will come across a variety of enemies and traps, such as mines and electric fences, and flying bots that will shoot you if you get close. You have one ability to attack said enemies, but it isn’t always easy enough to get close to them to be able to kill them. After a couple of heists collecting smaller sums of money, you will need to upgrade your skills in hacking; this allows you to hack computers and disable traps and use them against your foes. The hacking side of the game has its own mini-game of sorts as you have to follow the QTEs on screen in order to complete a hack, fail and you will probably find your self-splattered all up the wall.
The Swindle’s art style is very steam punky. The blacks and browns suite the setting very well and lighting is also a key part of any stealth game; whilst it is only basic lighting it does its job very well. Animation of your character and enemies is really well done too, with some really smooth and fluid movements to be seen when you are jumping from wall to wall Spiderman style. Whilst the game isn’t voice acted, the sound effects are nicely done, with a lot of focus being put on the amount of sound your character makes to try and catch you out by being heard by a guard, the footstep sounds are probably the best effect in this game.
This is a really difficult game. Even the first stage of heists is really difficult and you really need to take every move you make into serious consideration. Do you break through this window now or is there a better way? Do I try and take out this guard so I don’t have to worry about him on the way out or shall I try and sneak past? Every action you take in this game will have consequences later on in the level. The skills and equipment choices you make throughout the run will also have a huge impact as to how you play out the later levels of the game. The last heist on the police station is essentially what the whole game comes down too, in order to unlock the last heist you have to have unlocked every other stage and have a spare £400k sitting around. If you fail the last heist either by dying or being caught, you have to make £400k again, this is often absolutely detrimental to your run as it can take about three or four heists to make that money again. If you are getting close to the last few days of your run, it will often mean failure.
As each run lasts can last anywhere between 80 and maybe a little bit more than a 100 days (you can purchase an upgrade that gives you more time), and this will take about an hour each depending on how quick you are on the heists. There is a very high replay ability factor for this game though, and one that I will certainly be keeping installed just because of the random factors you get thrown at you. I managed to complete The Swindle on my third run and even then it was down to the last day or two of the time limit, so you really have to plan your steps carefully.
I played the game with a controller, and I didn’t have any problems controlling the game whilst carrying out the heists, I did however have a little of trouble navigating the menu screens and skills purchasing screens, it doesn’t seem to respond very well to the joysticks motions and had to opt to using the directional pad instead, minor issue though. There are a couple of graphical options you can change, but this game shouldn’t be taxing to any computer nowadays.
The thing that grabbed me initially with The Swindle would be the art style, and that remains one of the best parts of this game. Once you get past the surface of what seems to be a very samey style game to that of Spelunky, you actually have a really in-depth stealth based game that you will find sucking hours of time out of you. The high replay ability factor really pays off for this type of game, making the retail price of £11, 99 a real steal of a buy.
Tom's Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play
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Steam User 37
Welcome to London, 1849. Playing the role of a masterthief you hear word of an artificial intelligence device Scotland Yard is planning to deploy. Once deployed this device will bring complete surveillance along with ending your career and retirement plans. Considering it's stealth game from a developer who openly admits they dislike the genre, could have fooled me. Maybe it was a ruse? :)
Expands well starting with simple heists in the Slums district that doesn't involve more then dodging a few guards and picking up cash laying about the place (who does that!?). Gradually introducing new mechanics and smarter robots that quickly required both your platforming skills and wits. End goal is to stop the AI deployment which happens after 100 days. Heists use 1 day but if that sounds like a problem or you feel rushed, do have the ability to spend cash on increasing the timeframe.
Other primary goal of course is to increase your chances of success. Banking cash from successful heists can be spent on a range of upgrades, from simple double jumps to backpack steamjets that conceal the thieves presence momentarily. Character abilities can also purchased which included hacking tools, lockpicks, goggles that increase your general perception, bombs for blasting through walls and more. Progress to new zones is made by purchasing security clearance cards. Zones were uniquely themed and given the procedural nature levels designed quite well. Can't say I ran into any 'broken rooms' in my gametime and while most had familiar characteristics didn't feel like I had "Ben There, Dan That!"
Graphically the game is beautiful, supporting up to 4k+ screen resolution along with having options to disable the blur, sunrays and otherwise which should mean decent performance on most systems. Would recommend a gamepad but kb+mouse was responsive and completely remappable. Overall I can see myself spending hours playing The Swindle. Well worth checking out if you enjoy platformer/puzzle/rpg/survival...you get it. Cheers folks. :)
No commentary gameplay video below.
Steam User 38
An amazing action puzzle platformer that's about saving freedom for the price of some measly fiat currency.
Keep Big Brother at bay one day at a time before he keeps tabs on us all forevermore, just don't forget to close the door on the way out while you're at it.
Steam User 13
The Swindle does many things very well, but with one severe flaw.
The style, artwork and music (although limited in quantity) make for a very competent game.
This game will see you hacking computers, diffusing bombs, dispatching guards, climbing and hanging from walls. The idea is to enter a level, try and collect as much money as possible without being detected or killed and to escape and spend the money you collect on upgrades and proceeding to new levels, which have higher difficulty and bigger rewards.
It is a very difficult game and one false move can and usually will result in death and this is where the main problem with the game lies, the controls.
Too often a double jump, a swipe at an enemy, a jump over a pit will not register. A game that is so difficult that requires such precision, to have such poor controls is extremely frustrating and as you progress in the game you will find yourself in more and more difficult situations where you will be at the mercy of whether the game decides to accept your controller inputs.
Sticking to walls is very irritating also as your character tends to want to stick to walls that are either above or below their range, so trying to leave an area quickly can result into a lot of hanging onto and sliding down walls.
It is very unfortunate as the overall game is very well executed and without this problem, would be easy to recommend,
I’m still going to rate the game positive but would not recommend to players that are easily frustrated or are expecting trouble free gameplay.
Steam User 19
Been really digging this game. Its also hard but I never feel its the game or controls that did me in but my lack of skill. It kind of plays like the old old game Impossible Mission.
The game has a bit of rogue element with an endless progression of hired thieves that you end up killing off, mostly on accident and randomly generated levels. The tools you unlock can be combined in really enjoyable and creative waves.
I like the steam punk / Victorian England theme a lot. The art style as well as the music is top notch.
I know there is a lot of people with controller issues. I'm using a wireless 360 game pad and I haven't experienced any.
The Swindle isn't a must have game, it is really enjoyable.