Stealth video games are proliferated by particular forces protagonists, stone-cold spies, and ninjas. Extremely skilled, highly effective, emotionally stoic specialists in espionage. Their missions usually centre on counter-terrorism, entrenching them behind enemy traces, in warzones, stalking mysterious international locations by way of subterfuge. An arsenal of tactical gizmos often in tow, these elite operatives out-manoeuvre their prey, remorselessly killing earlier than retreating to the shadow’s sanctuary.
In Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream you might be none of this stuff. You’re not a specialist agent of darkness; you might be Hanna, a younger girl pushed to a lifetime of escape and evasion in pursuit of her brother Hermann’s whereabouts, out-foxing her metropolis’s police drive who’re additionally on the hunt. Her abilities? A back-of-her-hand data of Scandi-like metropolis Eriksholm’s format, and a trusting relationship with its agnostic inhabitants. Her motivations? An emotional reconnection together with her brother, and an try to reunite her household.
In her effort to uncover the thriller surrounding Hermann’s disappearance, Hanna ignites a series of occasions catastrophic sufficient to doubtlessly derail her metropolis’s future. As she peels again Eriksholm’s class she provokes forces darker than she ever imagined. Unravelling the eponymous metropolis’s secrets and techniques lights a hearth, a shiny beacon casting lengthy, darkish shadows; sanctuaries by which she – very like stealth video games’ usually elite operatives – can search respite.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is stealth cooked to a distinct recipe. Hanna isn’t reduce out for fight, not to mention killing. She’s brushed with authority earlier than, however invariably she’s susceptible. Nevertheless, her intricate understanding of town and its individuals is her best weapon, way more highly effective than the incapacitating dart gun she acquires later throughout her quest. Skulking dimly lit alleyways, accessing subterranean networks, squeezing via tight areas, she will be able to attain factors of curiosity and significance extra effectively than her pursuers.
The residents she encounters behave naturally, greeting her with good grace, supporting her mission by providing path via informal chat. While Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream’s moment-to-moment gameplay resembles what you’ve realized to count on from the style – observing patrol patterns, chucking noisy distracting objects, crouching in lengthy grass, et cetera – it’s Hanna because it’s main protagonist who units the sport aside.
Hanna isn’t the sport’s solely participant controllable character although, her ally Alva additionally tags alongside – trailed by Sebastian a lot afterward – with management freely switchable between all protagonists all through. Every brings particular person abilities to the desk too; Hanna crawls via vents, Alva climbs drain pipes, Sebastian can swim, and so forth. The sport’s environmental puzzles require gamers to make use of every of their social gathering collaboratively with the intention to progress collectively. This design selection veers away from stealth titan Shadow Ways: Blades of the Shogun’s multi-character strategy whereby, as distinct as every operative was, any obstacles might often be tackled solo; firing a cannon to blast a throughway beforehand inaccessible for his or her confederate, as an illustration.
In devising Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream’s puzzles, the Gothenburg-based group at River Finish Video games have taken a leaf out of fellow Swedes Hazelight Studios’ co-operative playbook whereby hurdles in Cut up Fiction, for instance, are overcome via player-character collaboration; one can’t progress with out working with their reverse quantity, combining their distinct ability units concurrently. Eriksholm provides single participant comparisons, in fact, however comparable design ethoses all the identical, conditions the place assessing environmental cues and obstacles in lieu of character abilities encourages gamers to select aside any given scene earlier than deciding on its most optimum route.
River Finish Video games’ Recreation Director Anders Hejdenberg describes Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream as a narrative-led, stealth-puzzle recreation, and it’s the sport’s emphasis on story which drives lots of the selections taken throughout growth by Hejdenberg to strengthen the title’s sturdy narrative beats.
Town of Eriksholm is impressed by turn-of-the-century Nordic cities. Having grown up and lived in Sweden, quite a few of the seventeen-strong group at River Finish Video games have been conscious of the area’s common attraction so that they labored laborious to craft an setting which is each beautiful and genuine, but exaggerated by socio-economic and political strife. Every of town’s districts is distinct, exuding tradition, structure, and social order that’re recognisably distinctive from each other.
Total, its aesthetic borrows somewhat from Dishonored’s Dunwall with somewhat extra from Disco Elysium’s Revachol, filtered via shades of dreamlike Studio Ghibli high quality, most notably from Scandi-inspired Kiki’s Supply Service. Very similar to Revachol of Disco Elysium, underlying Eriksholm is class battle, with unrestrained industrialisation and capitalism’s looming annihilation additional thematic integrations. Once more, akin to Disco Elysium, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream utilises its themes to supply a number of views for the participant to soak up and replicate on. The group have been very clear to not slip into cliché by defining wealthy suburbs as inhabited by evil doers, for instance. As a substitute, town’s environment feels grounded in plausible actuality. As a platform supposed for emotional storytelling, a metropolis designed some other method merely wouldn’t be as efficient.
It’s no shock to study that town itself was the primary stage of the sport’s development which River Finish Video games centered on. An setting steeped in historical past but on the precipice of a brand new age of technological opulence is a deeply attention-grabbing place to exist in. The sport’s puzzles, its characters, patrolling enemies, and ambling pedestrians, all share the identical beating coronary heart. Narrative informs every little thing; everybody and every little thing has a narrative to inform.
Story-first implies Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is a extra tightly curated, linear-by-design expertise, extra so than any of its stealth action-adventure contemporaries. We see this in its Limbo and Inside-style instafail restarts. When a guard spots a personality, as an illustration, the display fades to black and the failure rewinds again to the encounter’s onset. Every encounter, as acknowledged by Hejdenberg, is hand-crafted, with reactions from enemies and NPC behaviour alike tailor-made to particular conditions. If the choice was current for gamers to revert again to the shadows till a guard loses curiosity and returns to their publish, then narrative propulsion could be misplaced.
It’s debatable whether or not this mechanic fosters enveloping stealth gameplay to its best potential, however going into Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream with the mindset this can be a story to expertise via the aesthetic of stealth ought to assist alleviate any immersion-breaking considerations. Moreover, puzzles’ options are incessantly telegraphed to gamers by way of diegetic means, as an illustration: enemy dialogue might clue you into the very fact a guard is afraid of birds, so perhaps, you’d suppose, disrupting a flock resting close by might present efficient distraction. ‘Aha’ moments similar to this broaden linear design’s generally penned in nature. The guard afraid of birds might in all probability nonetheless be incapacitated by a dart, however contextual options built-in into the setting ensures participant company isn’t misplaced. Eriksholm isn’t a sandbox. Nevertheless, selection in find out how to remedy issues while experiencing an engrossing story that chugs alongside at a handmade tempo is an attractive prospect, and one which ought to make Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream the stealth recreation to stay up for.
Its isometric viewpoint may give the impression Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is intently aligned to Commandos, Desperados, or the aforementioned Shadow Ways, however that is in perspective solely. This debut title from River Finish Video games is extra akin to emotionally charged narrative-led video games like A Plague Story (Eriksholm’s inhabitants even undergo beneath the cloud of a debilitating illness dubbed Heartpox) however with novel stealth-based gameplay offering a automobile by which to mobilise its story.
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