Thief Town

Genre: Stealth / Party Game

Players: 2-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Thief Town, released on PC in 2014, ported to PlayStation 4 in 2015, then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a Party Game with a strong Stealth element where players control characters trying to blend in with a crowd while taking out enemies and avoiding being caught. The premise here has strong similarities to Hidden in Plain Sight. So strong, in fact, that there’s no avoiding comparing this game to that one.

This game uses somewhat primitive-looking 2D pixel art visuals for its characters and backgrounds (even more primitive than what was in Hidden in Plain Sight), backed by a pretty forgettable synthesized soundtrack. This simple presentation works well enough for the gameplay, but doesn’t really do it any favors, seeming pretty bland overall.

The gameplay is split into three modes – the standard Thief Town mode, Spy Town mode, and Drunk Town mode. Thief Town and Spy Town work largely the same, with players trying to take each other out while remaining hidden from other players, trying to mask their movement by moving like the identical-looking computer-controlled characters, with Spy Town just adding randomized special weapons into this mix that do various things. Drunk Town, on the other hand, selects one player to be a sheriff, who must discern who the real players are and shoot them with only a limited supply of bullets.

First, I think the hit detection here is suspect, and the way your attacks can be seen makes it far too easy to be discovered. The game modes are also all very similar to one another, and far fewer than what was in Hidden in Plain Sight. In Drunk Town, the fact that everyone but the sheriff is doing nothing other than “don’t be discovered” is pretty uninteresting for those players, and makes it harder for them to be spotted.

In other words, I think Hidden in Plain Sight is just a better take on this same formula in numerous ways, and it’s $1 cheaper, too. Between the poor hit detection, lacking variety, and limited number of gameplay modes, I just don’t see a reason to recommend Thief Town when there exists a much better take on this style of gameplay.

tl;dr – Thief Town is a Party Game with a strong Stealth element where players try to take each other out while blending into the crowd and not getting discovered. Unfortunately, this same premise was already done much, much better in Hidden in Plain Sight, with a wider variety of gameplay modes and better core gameplay, and I strongly encourage players to get that game instead of this one.

Grade: C-

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