Catch the Thief, If you can!

I want to root for this one, I genuinely do, because the seed of an idea here is charming: a 3D third-person chase game wearing Atari Keystone Kapers nostalgia on its sleeve, asking you to run down thieves across different historical eras. Present, Wild West, Medieval, Sci-fi future. Cops chasing criminals through time sounds like exactly the kind of breezy, couch-friendly arcade romp that indie dev scenes are built for. The premise clicks. The execution, at this stage, is harder to recommend. What actually shipped on Steam is an Early Access alpha that launched in January 2018 and, according to Steam's own warning label, has not received a developer update in over seven years. The originally promised roadmap called for six months in Early Access, with additional epochs and four more playable characters to follow. None of that arrived publicly. What you get in the current build is a single-player mode set in the present-day levels, local split-screen multiplayer for up to four players, and four match types: a Cops vs. Thieves battle mode, Collect the Money, Find the Exit, and Deathmatch. You pick from a roster of eight characters, swap weapons suited to each time period, and customize your cop or criminal before dropping in. The bones of a fun couch party game are there, just not much meat on them. The local multiplayer side is where any real value lives. Four people crammed onto one screen chasing each other through cartoon-styled environments does produce the chaotic energy the developer was aiming for, and controller support works reasonably well for that scenario. A gamepad is not optional here, it is mandatory for multiplayer. The single-player content, meanwhile, feels thin as a tutorial section rather than a standalone mode. There is no online multiplayer at all, which the community flagged within days of launch and which was never addressed. Built in Unreal Engine 4, the visual style leans cartoon and colorful, which suits the lighthearted tone. But with no post-launch polish and a community forum that barely has nine discussion threads across its entire lifespan, there is no living ecosystem here. No modding, no active playerbase to find online, no seasonal updates to check back for. The game is essentially preserved in amber at a very early build, with the promise of what it could have been still listed on the store page. For players who stumble onto this at a very low price point and have three friends physically in the same room with controllers, there is a sliver of chaotic fun to be extracted from the multiplayer modes. That is a narrow, specific use case. For everyone else, especially solo players, this is a cautionary tale about Early Access titles that quietly go quiet. The time-travel concept deserved a complete journey. It never took one.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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