Filcher

Filcher wears its influences on its sleeves for all to see. It is an indie stealth immersive sim made by a single person, and has heavy influence from the original Thief games. You play as Sporey, a thief in a noir cityscape on the prowl. Each mission sees you breaking into a guarded location, finding a specific object of note, grabbing as much extra loot as you can, then escaping with your new acquisitions. Each level also has a scoring system, encouraging you to find all the loot and secrets while also never being spotted by any guards. As you progress through the story, expect twists and turns as you get dragged into a conspiracy. The games graphics are simplistic, but they successfully capture the noir aesthetic, with a limited colour pallet that allows important features, like loot and cameras, to stand out easily. The enemies are 2D pixel art, as opposed to the 3D environments, but they blend in surprisingly well, and I never felt like they didn’t mesh with the rest of the game. The music is limited, the most you’ll hear is the very Thief-like droning ambience when you boot up or pause the game, but what is there is nice. The environmental sound design, however, is excellent. You can hear guards patrolling and cameras surveying clearly from a decent distance, allowing you to formulate a plan as you sneak through galleries and mansions, and you can always clearly tell what kind of floor you are walking on, alerting you to how much noise you make. The sound design is really well done. Gameplay wise, it’s hard to not compare it with the original two Thief games. If you liked those, you’ll appreciate this one man homage to them. The enemies don’t have a tremendous amount of variety to them, but each of the 9 missions available has its own quirks and characteristics, such as a nearby lighthouse intermittently illuminating and dimming your environment, that make them clearly stand out from one another. And each mission also has plenty of hidden loot and secrets to discover, for those who want to explore. One feature I wish this game had would be an in-game map, like what the original Thief games had. Not a typical game map, but a diegetic one that Sporey could have made earlier to show how the level (probably) looks like and allowing you to orient yourself. As it stands, it can be easy to get lost in a level and stumble onto a guards patrol. This leads into another item of note. The original game did not have an in-mission save system when it released, meaning each mistake would send you right to the start of the mission again. Fortunately, when I played there was a beta to test a proper save system, which I took full advantage of. It both makes the game much more accessible than it was upon release, but also allows you to experiment with routes and play styles in a way you could not with the original, save-less system. The new save system should hopefully be added into the game proper soon. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Filcher, It is clearly indebted to Thief, but does enough to stand out on its own merits. Plus, it’s a very impressive feat for a solo-developer. I would heartily recommend this to anyone who enjoys immersive sims, and Thief-likes in particular.

Thief this Thief that. But its too short, no open source for mission makers and just one able, talented guy wanting to b DJ Trump of indie sneakers. Also, assumably awaited for years savegame feature in beta of feb 2026, completely fksup shadows in mission 9, which makes ghost run practically impossible

Sick cutscenes, sick visuals, sick music, cute noisemaker. Gameplay is a bit stripped down compared to Thief, less verticality to the point of not being able to climb furniture, but the ability to slide around is so fun I think it kinda makes up for it.

I quite enjoyed Filcher, it's a little on the short side and I found the sound effects grating but It is one of the better Thief-like games on steam.

With the recent addition of quick-saving, I feel reinvigorated to give this game a second shot. This is a clunkier, smaller-scale, but authentic homage to the classic Thief games. And it has enough of its own worldbuilding and charm to stand alone. The act of sneaking around is satisfying (the slide is fun and not completely broken). Enemies have predictable patrols but ruthless detection. Level design is a real highlight, and the atmosphere is suffocating. These elements alone make Filcher a worthy stealth title. Stealth as a genre seems to be struggling a little right now. Between this and Spirited Thief, I feel relieved to see dedicated indie developers still doing their own thing!

really nice aesthetic, a lot like batman the animated series. story wasn't bad, could have been better though. dev added a quick save system in the new update. a solid 6/10. I really liked it, wish there was fm support.