The deafening ambient gale at the opening of this trailer is a good starting point for understanding Tangiers – a stealth game that builds on the ancient but rarely bettered mechanics and sound design of classic Thief.
Beyond that, though, there’s no hope of understanding a thing that’s going on in this fraught, fractured Tangierian dream.
A cracked torso in the desert? Er, okay, we can roll with – NO, NO, TOO WEIRD, ABORT.
You’ll have noticed the words falling from the mouths of Tangiers’ misproportioned NPCs. That’s not just a Splinter Cellish stylistic touch – in Tangiers’ broken world, the spoken word has begun to take physical form.
“A guard’s frustrations at being unable to find you can be gathered up and thrown down the street, sending him astray,” explain developers Andalusian. “The overheard words of an intimate, illicit conversation can be collected and used to unveil hidden pathways and otherwise unseen aspects of the world.”
The meat of the game will be infiltration and assassination, in a sandbox that reshapes itself around the cuts and slashes you make in it.
It’s going to be on Windows, Linux and Mac at some point this year, and utterly unique. Do you reckon it’ll be good too?