If you’re a fan of the old Thief games, an indie developer is working on a retro-styled FPS that focuses on stealth and backstabbing your way to victory.
Stealth as a mechanic has a long history in gaming, with the Thief series putting down the first building blocks. Nowadays some of the innovation has worn off, but developers still manage to bring some new elements into the mix. Tris, the one-man developer team behind Knife Demon Software, is working on a low-fidelity reimagining of the Thief games.
Brush Burial is set in a dark, gloomy fantasy world filled with various factions and races. You will take control of Fennel, a swamp devil with eight eyes that is motivated by greed and pure malice. Your main weapon is Fennel’s tail, which will poke and stab enemies to death and allow you to navigate your environment quickly. You can also pick up various items with his tail and fling them into unsuspecting targets. This leads to plenty of options when fighting since you can quickly reposition while throwing lanterns at your enemies to set them on fire.
The PS1 graphics are filled with hand-drawn textures that are put through the shredder for that retro look. Environments are mainly medieval-looking dungeons filled with low-poly enemies. You can also interact with various NPCs to get missions. The game offers full freedom in how you want to approach each mission, which might remind some of the Hitman games. Brush Burial will be coming out sometime later this year and you can try out the demo right now on itch.io.
