Abermore

I went into Abermore genuinely excited. A first-person heist RPG set in a neo-Edwardian city, structured around an 18-day countdown to a grand finale, where every choice about which job to take shapes your crew and your chances? That premise has real bones. You play as a thief stepping into the legacy of the Unhanged Man, a Robin Hood figure whose capture kicks off the whole scheme. The writing reflects that setup with surprising warmth and dry wit. The cast of ne'er-do-wells you meet in the Gutter and the Black Market hub each have distinct voices, and the mechanic of choosing only one job offer per in-game night means your story through the city actually does feel like your own. That part works, and it is the reason the game generates any goodwill at all. The core stealth loop draws clearly from Thief and Dishonored: a visibility meter tied to light and shadow, guards on patrol, alarms, cameras, and a grab-bag of tools including lockpicks, sleep darts, and a crossbow useful for snuffing out lights from a distance. There is also a Tarot card system that layers randomised powers on top of standard sneaking, and a "strike" system where suspicious NPCs log disturbances at a security terminal, escalating alert levels if you get sloppy. On paper that is a thoughtful set of interlocking systems. In practice, the shadow detection is so forgiving it borders on comedy. You can practically stand next to a guard in the dark and they will file no complaints. The immersive sim fantasy collapses quickly when the AI stops being a threat. Then there is the procedural generation, which is where Abermore really loses the plot. The pitch is that every campaign run produces a unique sequence of levels. The reality is a rotation of the same tiled hallways and library rooms reshuffled into slightly different order. Missions are short and self-contained, and the procgen robs them of the spatial memory that makes Thief-style games satisfying to master. You cannot learn a house. You can only react to another set of identical corridors. Couple that with the bug situation at launch, which was severe enough to earn scores in the 30-54 range from major outlets, and the picture gets grim. Objective trackers misfired, audio looped or cut out entirely mid-mission, and the save system offered no clear feedback on whether your progress was actually being recorded. It is worth noting that the Steam user review score sits at 16% positive from a small sample, which confirms the launch-state problems were not a press-only experience. No significant post-launch patch wave appears to have rehabilitated the game's standing. The sadder truth is that buried under the technical wreckage there is a genuinely charming setting with a strong narrative hook. A city that feels like Edinburgh at a steampunk convention, a cult of beetle worshippers as ambient lore flavour, bizarre improvised tools like rubber ducks and bananas as distraction items. Someone had ideas here. Those ideas just never got the engineering stability to breathe. If you have a high tolerance for jank, love the Thief lineage deeply, and catch this at a very low price, the writing and worldbuilding might hold your attention for a run or two. Anyone expecting a polished immersive sim with meaningful build variety and a replayable structure should look elsewhere.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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