The Swindle Review

Another week another strong Wii U indie release, when you look at it a new, great indie game is coming for the console pretty regular nowadays. I am sure this has been designed by Nintendo to be this way, to make up for the lack of larger releases. The delay of Star For has been cruel but understandable for fans; the indie scene has been leaned upon heavier and heavier to make up for it. This has been good and bad, the general quality has been high, there hasn’t been much shovel ware, but no matter how they are put, any indie title will never make up to a Zelda or 3D Mario title. Harsh but true!

Back on to the game, this is a steam punk robbery simulator with randomly generated places to rob. Have you played Spelunky before? Think of that crossed with Bonanza Brothers (A game I loved, what happened to you Sega!)! If you can’t get it from that, let me expand! Well you are in control of a bunch of burglars; you have missions to complete, breaking into a house or a building to get as much swag as possible. All set to a steam punk Victorian London setting, with a Robin hood type thing going on, am I making it sound cool?

Well that’s because it is, quite. The setting is cool, the graphics are nice if a little dull due to the setting, it’s theming is well done overall. The story is you are gathering funds and levelling your team up for a final big heist, this occurs after a hundred rounds of heists. It is an interesting little story really, and while there are lots of things to do, there is some problems to be talked about too.

At heart the game is a simple stealth 2D platformer, it is pretty fun smashing windows, scaling walls and back siding robot guards! This is true bar one thing, the difficulty level for the game is quite steep, the stealth thing is a big part of the game, but it is extremely sensitive and more often than not the alarm is going off rather quick. This becomes less as you play and get used to the game.

There is also a deep levelling up system that helps you get the skills to pay the bills, however you need to pay for them up front, and that can be challenge in itself. You get a new burglar every time you lose one but you feel an impending sense of doom having failed a good few times in a row, I can see how and why people would just throw the towel in if things got frustrating.

The levels progress with you as well with different enemies that scale in difficulty themselves. I feel you need to put your time into the game to get the best out of it, but is the aforementioned time worth it? Well that depends on the gamer themselves, I would say there is some fun to be had here but it’s not a perfect proposition at all!

There is no failing the production quality or the gameplay apart from what I have talked about there. The game is just frustrating and can even seem hopeless and I don’t really like games that make me feel hopeless, it’s as simple as that. I can see some people disagreeing with me but as I sit playing this I just wish it was Spelunky, the money system and the building up to a big heist was just simple stuff. I think this is worth a look if you like the sounds of it, just not for me I guess!

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Wii U code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.