Thief Town is a four player single screen party game from Glass Knuckle Games. It’s available on Steam, Android and Apple devices, so everywhere! Every player looks identical and must try to discover who their friends are to stab them. You play across multiple rounds and receive points for each successful stabbing, the first player to reach the score threshold wins.
Thief Town actually offers LAN play, which for times when everyone has their devices avoids everyone huddling around a single keyboard. Plus, being cross-platform compatible, everyone can play on their phones instead of their laptop. When I was playing we had a good mix of people on Xbox controllers and keyboard sharing, but using a mechanical keyboard did feel as something of a disadvantage! When each key press is a loud clank it’s quite easy to assume who you might be.
I actually had the chance to get a few friends together and it was honestly a blast. The game naturally lends itself to those of a competitive nature, the multitude of different game types and items kept things fresh across multiple rounds. The items vary from things that make it easier for you to hide or make your friends more likely to reveal themselves.
There is a good use of build up from round to round, Thief Down doesn’t just throw all the abilities and challenges at you from the first round. They’re gradually ramped into. From a design perspective its honestly a really nice touch, it makes it so first time players can learn everything without suddenly being blown out the water by more advanced players.
Players reveal themselves whenever they stab, so the moment you start going around stabbing everything in sight all the other players know exactly who you are. The same can be said for when you stand idle, your character lays on the ground as another indication of who you are. Careful consideration has been placed to make sure players try their best to behave like NPC’s.
The set up time took a little longer than most party games but that is mostly due to Thief Town offering completely rebind-able keys. Thankfully it remembers your controls for each time you open the game, but it might be something you want to do before you put controllers in the hands of all your friends. All it takes is one small cock-up to have your left key moving you up and your stab key on the other side of the keyboard.
Overall that’s all there really is to Thief Town, the game is incredibly well polished and has everything you need for having a good time with friends. The cheap price point as well is another massive bonus, meaning if a bunch of friends are round it won’t take much convincing to get them to buy it! One downside that can’t be ignored is the obvious dependence on local multiplayer, so if you don’t have any friends… This might not be the game for you.
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.
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