Relooted

The combination of preperation phase and escape is a genuinely fun and gratifying experience for anyone who likes strategising/puzzling and also speed platforming. Preperation phase consists of casing, scouting and setting up your escape route. Escape route follows a very basic structure of holding down the "run fast" button while you quickly decide when to jump and when to time speed boosts. For anyone who likes the sound of this I HIGHLY recommend playing the game on the hardest difficulty. This is far from the hardest game that I've played, but I did need to restart levels now and then. Sometimes to execute new plans of entry, navigation and escape. Sometimes because I failed the escape due to mechanical mistakes. Sometimes because I didn't get a perfect score and wanted to try again :D The game looks good overall, the soundtrack is strong, the voice acting is on point. Overall the aesthetics definitely improve the experience. Having the conceit of the game centre around African artifacts makes for an interesting history lesson as well. It also makes the characters inherently more sympathetic as they clearly care for these pieces a lot more than if they were just stealing money, as in classic heist stories. For the mid... the story is honestly just okay. The characters are sympathetic enough to get you invested but the writing feels more servicable than stellar. Some cast adjustments later in the game makes me think that this setting could have some real potential for a more dramatic sequel but who knows? The use of tables also starts to feel a bit forced at times. The "run fast" button works like in Assassin's Creed, and so it has the same issues. Sometimes you just want to jump off a ledge and the game has you cross a hurdle, swing on a ring and jump out of a window. This can feel even more annoying when you are trying to pass one of your allies on the level as they will immediately carry out their displacement actions on you. It's ultimately a bit of a skill issue on the player's end (me), but it can be a bit annoying while learning. Allies can also be a bit finnicky as to when they actually feel like appearing, which can make some waits kind of excruciating. The wall jumping can also feel a bit finnicky at times. The bad is that the game is still not terrible well optimised and will sometimes start to chug if you leave it on for too long. I'll also say that the final level's use of fade-outs to express that the run is a lot longer than you are playing just feels disorienting and jarring rather than slick. The WORST part however is that I genuinely enjoyed the main levels a lot and I would have loved to have more of them to play! If there isn't a sequel, which in the world of indie releases is quite common, then I'd absolutely love a DLC for the game that just adds a bunch more challenge levels to play through.