Today on the stage at EGX Rezzed 2015, Dan Marshall discussed his game The Swindle and how he has used his experiences with other stealth games to make the game that he wanted to make.

The presentation started off with Marshall saying that indie developers were able to create games to target niches and specific types of games that they thought the gamers wanted but didn’t yet exist. He said that while he enjoyed stealth games, he had come to dislike a lot of the ‘tropes’ associated with it and so had aimed to make The Swindle a stealth game that didn’t contain any of those bits he disliked, such as confusing line-of-sight or fail conditions that would throw you back to a checkpoint over and over.

The Swindle is basically a stealth game that takes place in a steampunk setting, with some cyberpunk vibes thrown in too for good measure. The aim of the game is to break into and steal all the money from the levels which take the form of buildings which are procedurally generated, so you never play the same building twice. You can choose to break into the building however you want and approach the stealing in any manner, although there are enemy robot guards, cameras and other security entities around who will set off the alarm if they see you, draining the remaining money from the building’s access points. Ultimately the goal is to steal as much as you can and escape before the police show up at the end of the time limit.

The story of the game is that this world’s equivalent of Scotland Yard will be turning on a giant AI to monitor the city and all crime in 100 days. As a thief that’d make your life a bit difficult so you’re eventually working your way up to stealing the AI before it will be turned on. The alarms in each building will reduce the remaining day count by 1 every time they’re set off though, which Marshall said is how the game will add tension rather than the ‘get caught, reset to checkpoint’ method employed by other games.

The Swindle is being made by Size Five Games, and is hoped to be out sometime soon although no details or platforms have yet been announced.