Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been uploading Trilby rank videos of each of the Heists from Yahtzee’s new game. I just Trilby ranked the last stage today, so I thought it would be nice to put them all together along with the introductory texts to each level, as a full Trilby Rank playthrough.
Not shown are the bonus heist (which is basically just a rerun of all the game’s levels), or the awesome minigame you get for completing the bonus heist with the cream suit (which I don’t want to spoil for you).
Chapow City, 1991.
They call it the city of stolen dreams. It’s the city that your parents warned you about. It’s the city where money is the only thing that matters, where the rich live high above the streets and the poor pick through their trash.
In England, I was strictly small time, picking rusty locks in ancient manor houses. It wasn’t enough for me. So I came here, to America, with only one idea on my mind: to become the greatest thief in the world. To seek other people’s fortunes.
I have been mentored by some of the best criminal minds of their time. I have honed my skills to their absolute peak. In the homeland of the idle rich I will show them just how powerless they are. Because no lock, no bar, no guard, can stop me from going where I want to go.
My name is Trilby.
Be warned, everything after the jump is a spoiler!
I posted this over at indygamer blogspot a few days ago when I first came across it; at that stage I hadn’t played very much of it so there wasn’t a lot I could say about it. I’ve since finished it.
Before I say a thing about this game, I really must say something about its creator. Chances are most people reading this have already heard of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw; he’s created more polished, complete games than most people have walkabout demos, his Chzo Mythos quadrilogy made the fifty really good indie games feature here as an example of indie gaming’s finest, and of course, he’s the author of Zero Punctuation – The best thing ever to hit game reviewing, in my opinion. It’s clever, it’s original, and above all, it’s bloody funny. He reviews Peggle and compares Popcap to the evil team in an 80s sports movie, he rants irrelevantly about American foreign policy for half his Medal of Honour review, he gets his viewers to cripple themselves as punishment for not buying Psychonauts en masse – what a legend!
Although expectations are pretty high when a guy with that kinda track record releases a new game, I’m sure it’ll be no surprise for anyone here to learn that The Art of Theft doesn’t disappoint. It’s excellent.
The concept is great: two years before Five Days a Stranger, Trilby is an aspiring cat-burglar in Chapow City. The Art of Theft deals with the story of his daring heists and how he made his name. Although the writing’s excellent, the focus is on gameplay – it’s a stealth platformer (not a combination you see very often) which demands patience and impeccable timing to get ahead.
I should warn you that the game has some serious flaws though – the difficulty curve ramps up too fast, save points are too infrequent leading to frustrating repetition when you inevitably lose a mission and have to start again, and then there are a few little things: like cutting wires, which is an unwelcome game of chance in an otherwise entirely skill driven game.
But hey, I wouldn’t have written all this if I didn’t absolutely love it regardless! What we have here is one of the most original, well designed and addictive games released this year. Hardly a single room goes by that doesn’t show off some little moment of brilliant creativity; usually a well written note or nifty construct of some sort. It really is superb.
I was going to put this at the top, but it’s a bit spoilerish so I’ll put it here instead: Want to see the game in action? Here’s a video of me making the first level look easy:
Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, best known for the awesome Chzo Mythos (aka the “X Days” series of adventure games), now has a weekly videocast on The Escapist, called Zero Punctuation. The videocast seems focused on mainstream games, but it’s only three weeks in, so who knows?
And wow, I thought Sir Graham Goring talked fast but this Brit straight up vomits words onto your face! I can only assume that the videocast’s title comes from the fact that the script he’s reading has no spaces between the words. Sheesh!
Seriously, though, it’s pretty fun to watch. I just have to pause the videos like every 15 seconds so that my dinosaur brain can process the novel that’s just been spat out at me. I wish I could see him speaking. I’ll bet it looks kinda like…
Chapow City, 1991.
We're drawing robots in the forums. 
