At this point in time, I firmly believe it is impossible for publisher New Blood Interactive to make a disappointing game. DUSK, Amid Evil, and Maximum Action are all solid FPS titles that fans of classic shooters need to play. They recapture the past, improve on issues older games had, and provide utterly unique experiences while doing so.

Gloomwood is much the same as those past titans.

Teased for months now on New Blood's Twitter account, Gloomwood was given a private demo at the company's PAX East 2020 booth that finally unveiled gameplay to the world. What's the easiest description I can give? It's Thief, but better. That may be a little reductive (I don't mean to imply Thief has been replaced), but Gloomwood is an immersive sim in the vein of what Looking Glass Studios made in the 90s.

The setting of Gloomwood is that of a Victorian-era town. Everything is dark, spooky, and absolutely dripping with atmosphere. Rendered in a low-poly aesthetic, Gloomwood is reminiscent of early PS1-style games with its chunky characters and weapon models. All of this is in service of the genuinely spooky vibe that echoes across the empty streets.

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Via: New Blood Interactive

Once you get your bearings, you'll notice how detailed and immersive the sound design is. That's probably where the biggest comparison to Thief can be seen. Looking Glass did something special with sound propagation back in the day and Gloomwood is very similar. Different surfaces give off specific sounds that will get louder if you run or are standing, so it behooves you to crouch and sneak around if you don't want to die.

You'll skulk around this town gathering keys, solving some puzzles, and generally backstabbing foes so that they don’t bum rush you. Where Gloomwood differentiates from Thief is that you have an arsenal for when things go south. The demo contained a six-shot revolver and double-barrel shotgun, but you'll need to manually reload it when you empty a clip. Also, there's no HUD, so you have to check your ammo by holding R.

Even the inventory is handled in a similar fashion. You'll press tab and a backpack will come up on the screen in real-time. From there, you'll get a health bar to check your vitality and you'll be able to interact with any items you've picked up. Since there's no auto-healing and checkpoints are very scarce, you'll need to top off your health if you're too low. You can also try to be a total boss and go through levels without healing.

The enemy design makes that a scary prospect. The basic baddies in this demo were that of plague doctors, but there's some truly demented looking monster lurking in the sewers. I had actually asked Dillon Rogers, lead developer on Gloomwood if I could backstab these foes since the atmosphere gave me doubts. It's astounding how powerful certain audio cues and clips can be in making you genuinely creeped out by a fictional game.

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Via: New Blood Interactive

Still, that shotgun does work wonders and those indescribable horrors won't stand up to too many blasts. You don't have the ammo to take out the amount present in the demo, but it's nice to know that a slight mistake won't spell a restart if you can react fast enough. With phonographs being the only way to save during a level, death carries a lot of punishment.

That's really the best aspect of Gloomwood. It carries the DNA of the past but isn't as obtuse or clunky. When you want to grab a bottle and throw it to distract an enemy, it doesn't feel like an ordeal of remembering weird controls and pushing multiple buttons. You just sort of look at the bottle, grab it and toss. It works so well and feels so smooth that I couldn't help but get sucked into this truly terrifying world.

Current progress on Gloomwood isn't that far along, but everything already in place has me incredibly excited. It has been eons since Thief truly felt like the originals (that 2014 game wasn't very good) and not many developers are currently working on immersive sims. System Shock 3 was basically canceled recently, so there's one less that we'll be getting in the future.

If Gloomwood ends up being a lesser clone of Thief somehow, that's still better than no attempt at all. I don't think that's likely considering how solid it currently feels.

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