Thick as Thieves is quite a different stealth game from what you will have seen before. Something that may leave players a little bewildered is the fact that it doesn't let you pause the game, or quickly save if you think you're about to get caught. As game director Jeff Hickman explained to us, you are going to get caught in Thick as Thieves, but players should see it as part of the experience, rather than something that needs to be avoided.
"There are no saves - the game has been architected to be multiplayer from the very beginning, so no pauses, no saves. Rather than inching through the world puzzle by puzzle and "save-scumming" to get through something extraordinarily difficult, we've given the player some very powerful tools, and then it's up to them to set the difficulty appropriately," Hickman explained. In Thick as Thieves, you can alter the difficulty at your leisure, and of course if you take a buddy with you, you won't be alone in your thieving. That's why there's no real saves, as it likely would've been too difficult to implement in a multiplayer game.
"Players are going to get detected - detection equalling failure is one of the novice mistakes that people who dabble with stealth make early on; it's binary and unforgiving and frustrating. As a player, you need to be able to recover from your mistakes, and if you're successful in removing yourself from an alerted situation, the world needs to reset and let you re-approach it," Hickman said. The loop isn't about doing everything perfectly in one go. It's about letting players build a strategy each time they enter a new level, and see if it works out or doesn't.
If you want to find out more about Thick as Thieves' unique approach to stealth, take a look at our interview here.