‘Thief with guns’ stealth ’em up Gloomwood shoots into early access in August

Self-styled retro Thief-like FPS Gloomwood is stealthing its way into Steam Early Access on August 16th, an announcement that snuck in as part of last night’s PC Gaming Show. See, it’s like Thief but has guns. Oh, and Resident Evil 4’s inventory Tetris, which is possibly the best inventory system ever invented. Witness for yourself in the trailer below.

Gloomwood certainly has worked hard on developing a circa-2000 immersive sim aesthetic, which takes me right back to the good old days. There seems to be a nice, hefty shotgun to tote around too. You can shoot out lights to create shadowy cover for yourself, create distractions by throwing objects to smash windows, and sneak up to pinch keys from enemies. Choose to go loud and you’ve got a selection of swords, shotguns and pistols to find. Some nasty looking bear traps are an option if you’re more stealth-minded though.

The environments have a lot of appealingly claustrophobic verticality to them, with elevators and dark tunnels you can climb through using ropes. You can drop from pretty bloody high up to backstab – brainstab? – enemies. Watch out for their vision cones, which pop out of their eyes and turn from bright green to red if you’re spotted. The game was first shown at 2020’s PC Gaming Show and meant to enter early access later that year, but we’re finally getting a shot at it this year instead.

You can try out Gloomwood’s pre-alpha demo on Steam now while you’re waiting for the Early Access period to start. Handily enough it’s also part of summer’s Steam Next Fest, which begins today.

Not E3 2022 is in full-swing – see everything in our E3 2022 hub, as well as our complete round-up of everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2022. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, so make sure you stay up to date with our summer games stream schedule.