Pixels like your Macintosh Performa used to bake

Image credit: Starhelm Studios

It is time to once again desecrate the much-pillaged tomb of Looking Glass Studios and have it away with the materials for a new dark fantasy immersive sim. Starhelm Studios have announced Project Shadowglass, a purebred first-person Thief-like with a light-shadow system, lockpicking, pickpocketing, noisy or quieter walkable surfaces, magical traps, heist planning and jailbreaks.

Lead developer Dominick John is one of the two people behind Youtube music parody outfit Space Bards, but it doesn’t sound like you’ll be singing much in Project Shadowglass. Not unless you really enjoy getting caught. Or are great at ventriloquy. Has an imsim allowed you to distract people using ventriloquy yet? Maybe next time.

Project Shadowglass is making waves partly because the announcement teaser below is a dunk on generative AI. Long story short: a month or two ago, some clever custard posted a generated gif of a rustic fantasy game mock-up, with a torch-wielding player trotting down a valley towards a gigantic castle. The image earned viral acclaim from the AIdvocates and scornful quote-tweets from the detrAIctors. Speaking as a very long-winded detrAIctor, my only takeaway from the generated mock-up is that more games should have cloud-piercing, Maleficent-worthy citadels in them, while doing elementary things with perspective.

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The Project Shadowglass teaser references the mock-up in the opening seconds, and alludes to it on the official site. It’s weirdly clap-back for a project whose “360 degree pixelart” tech has apparently been on the boil for years. “Everything you see is 100% real and running realtime in-engine,” reads the blurb. “It may look similar to those pretty pixel art AI videos, but this is the playable real deal. No content or art featured in Project Shadowglass will be AI generated.”

If I were being a stinkpot, I’d object that Project Shadowglass’s wistfully corrugated graphic are channelling the same mouldy nostalgia that enables much genAI culture. GenAI is inherently reactionary and regurgitative, after all, and many emerging genAI creators have found an audience by targeting well-known aesthetics. Project Shadowglass just isn’t consuming as much electricity to do it, pixel for pixel, or filching anybody’s art in the process - Starhelm have credited the makers of all the open source creative commons assets used in the teaser.

As you’d expect from the pixelart direction, this appears to be a no-frills love letter to the genre, blending ideas from Thief, Deus Ex and Shock. Your tactics and techniques includes dousing torches, hiding bodies and memorising patrol routes. There’s a persistent city environment in which you can build a reputation as a murderer, causing the regular civvies to flee from you on sight. You’ll get to research and plan heists, perhaps acquiring new gear, crafting recipes or components before committing to the robbery.

It seems progression-light. “You are no hero with powers,” explains the Steam page. “Instead, you must rely solely on improving your own planning and skill.” Needless to say, hand-to-hand combat is discouraged, as is falling off high objects.

Some story blurb to finish: “In a lush, dark, and oppressive seaside kingdom, the richest nobles have fallen in line with a new king promising them more. The poor grow poorer, the rich grow richer. The claustrophobic city has been building more walls to keep them out from where they don’t belong. Higher towers to not hear them, smell them, but always keep an eye on them. But they didn’t account for you.”

I’d tell you when you can play it, but sadly, some cat burglar has snuck in and absconded with the ciphered note containing the release date. They have left the derisive calling card “to be announced”.