The Swindle

Editor's Notes

Digital Xbox One version reviewed.

Introduction

'The Swindle' was developed by Size Five Games, a British company that develops indie titles and won a BAFTA a few years ago for a sex ed game, of all things. 'The Swindle', which has been cancelled at least once, experienced a small delay on the Xbox One but is now available along with versions for the PS3, PS4, Vita, PC, and someday the Wii U.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

Another entry in the recent trend of roguelikes, 'The Swindle' is a 2D stealth platformer featuring procedurally generated levels, high difficulty, and a challenging death penalty. From my trusty zeppelin tethered over an alternate 19th-century London, I plotted my next heist on the unsuspecting poor people living in the slums. It turns out that these poor people can afford very sophisticated security systems, including guard robots, mines, cameras, and reinforced computer terminals, although they very rarely lock their doors. When I eventually made it to the nicer parts of town (after many agonizing deaths), I discovered an even more grandiose surveillance gauntlet that would put the NSA to shame.

A thief can only suffer one hit before they die, so stealth is crucial. In the event that I was discovered, I usually abandoned all aspirations of thievery and hightailed it back to the airship. Unlike many stealth games where guards will return to their patrol behavior after a time (even if they discover a corpse, isn’t that odd?), the robots of 'The Swindle' will stay on alert throughout the entire heist. During this time, all money still available will slowly trickle down, and eventually police bots will show up with armed hovercraft and start destroying the building to find me, which seemed a bit excessive but maybe these slumdwellers have excellent insurance in addition to their cutting edge security.

Each playthrough has a duration of 100 days, with one heist constituting one day. The heists themselves are not timed, so I soon learned to take it slow and case the house carefully before getting into the nitty gritty of disabling the security, walloping guards with my blackjack, and jumping over large spiked pits. How do people live in these homes? Scotland Yard is working on an ambitious domestic spying program that will be completed in precisely 100 days, making theft impossible after it is completed. It is possible to extend the timeframe and even steal the project out from under the cops, but this requires a huge investment per attempt.

The vagaries of procedural generation sometimes results in oddities among the level design or guard behavior. On day 3, before I could afford bombs, all of the computers in the house were placed in an underground vault that could only be reached with bombs. On other days, the interior could only be accessed via one passage that had unmoving guards, or tall ledges that can’t be reached with a double jump. On those days there’s nothing that can be done except to gather whatever spare change I can and return to the airship to try again. While frustrating, I learned to take it in stride, and because thieves earn experience that accumulates the longer they live, I became very conservative during heists. It is much better to return to the airship with only half the take than to go for broke, die, lose all of the money in my hands, and have to employ a new thief the next day.