Filcher

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Hours played at review time, across 54 reviews with recorded playtime.

positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up

I was pleasantly surprised by Filcher, TLDR is if you like Thief 1 and 2 I think you should pick this game up and give it a try! For a game developed by (mostly) a single person, Filcher is very impressive. The game looks great and accomplishes a lot with so little; I was especially a fan of the dynamic shadows, they add so much to both gameplay and the vibes. Speaking of gameplay, the movement feels very solid. I absolutely love the silent slide mechanic. I was a little disappointed to not see any climbing mechanic (outside of ladders) but even without it the levels were great. Each level was paced really well, had a nice flow, and some very awesome secrets. I'm a huge fan of the music too, it really elevated the vibe and fit the tone perfectly. However for many other aspects of the sound department I felt disappointed by or flat out disliked them. Most notably sound transmission was not the best. I struggled to be able to tell if a guard was walking directly above me or if they were on the same floor as me. When I was in a room with a closed door it was hard to hear anyone outside of the room and I was also disappointed that I was not able to more clearly through doors by leaning up against them. Some of the sound effects are great, like the traversal sounds, but many other SFX in the game have a retro bit-crush vibe to them which I was personally not a fan of at all. Another big disappointment with sound is voice acting. There is no voice acting in the game outside of grunts and yawns from the guards. Obviously voice acting would have elevated the experience significantly for both gameplay and the story cutscenes (which I love the artwork of btw!), but it was probably out of scope and or budget for the dev. I had some pretty bad performance issues with the game at points which seemed to be caused by creating too many saves in one level. Other than what was previously mentioned and some objects that were placed not flush with a surface in some levels (which I wouldn't really call a bug), my experience was pretty much bug free. I'm excited to see what the developer does next, and I hope this game is successful enough to warrant/help pay for a sequel.