Picklock Review - Minimalist Thief

I enjoyed this little indie stealth game called Picklock, developed and published by Deqaf Studio, and wanted to share my thoughts about it. 

The game starts with our grumpy protagonist talking about being tired of honest work and wanting to earn a lot of money in a short time to retire for good. Our first job is to steal anything we can find in our neighbours' house which we know is empty since the residents are away. Our character knows where they hide a spare key so we can easily get in, steal everything we can without worrying about any potential threats and get out.

The aforementioned first mission plays as the tutorial of the game to teach you the basics of controls which can be a bit uncomfortable at first if you haven't played RTT games before. Sadly the controls can't be customised either so we are stuck with the controls the game gives us. I have ample experience in the RTT genre yet I really felt like I would have played the game more efficiently if I could switch middle and right mouse buttons.

Left mouse button moves our character. WASD keys as well as the middle mouse button can move the camera while holding right mouse button will allow you to rotate the camera. I've grown accustomed to rotating the map with the middle mouse button so it took me a few missions to get used to the new controls. There is also your drone that highlights pretty much every info you need to know from doors to loot, paths the guards take or even how long they stand still when they take breaks from patrolling. 

The game is quite simplistic but there is still a nice difficulty curve with every few mission introducing the player new mechanics. Sure, we start from a mission which is completely free for all with 0 threats but then we start dealing with locked doors and windows, security guards, patrols, alarms, police should we raise an alarm, cameras, hidden safes so on and on. If an alarm is raised you will have a few seconds before the police arrives; however, once the police arrives on scene they won't leave. There are a few missions that won't have the police even if you are seen but they are rather rare. 

It can be quite easy to get caught in this game. The guards have rather long viewcones but you can also get caught via a camera or by breaking into a door/window without disabling its alarm. In one mission I had to sneak into the bedroom and use a key I stole to open up the controls to access a hidden room. The room was hidden behind a bookcase in an office space where the resident frequently patrols around. If you open the bookcase and the resident sees it, he'll call the police immediately. This is a such a neat feature for such a minimalist game. There are wardrobes you can hide in; however, these are not frequent and only a few missions have them. Majority of the game we have to watch how the guards behave, plan our moves and carry out our strategy without the sense of security comes from hiding places.

Since we have to deal with new mechanics so often we also need to come to our mission location prepared. Our friend at the pawn shop will always know where we should hit next, what kind of security the area has and give us the required tools for us to deal with it. Breaking into safes, disabling cameras and alarms... We will always be fully equipped to deal with whatever the mission throws at us thanks to our friend at the pawn shop.

The missions are not long and they don't take place in large areas; although, later missions will surely get more complex. I should also mention that there are no checkpoints or saves during a mission. I personally despise such a decision but I found that I could still enjoy this game. I quit playing Serial Cleaner for example because it was starting to really bother me that there is no way to save our mission progress. Even an arcade stealth game such as Spy Chameleon had checkpoints on slightly longer missions :S Either way I didn't find myself constantly restarting the mission to retry again. The more complex missions usually took me 2-3 retries at the most while I could finish majority of the maps on my first go.

Every mission will have a main item you need to steal to complete it as well as optional loot. For achievement hunters this becomes mandatory since every mission has an achievement to complete  it the perfect way which requires you to steal every available item. There is even an achievement to steal every single toilet paper as well :)

This game is about stealing but you can actually use the money to buy things to give your character a more comfortable life. It is possible to renovate your home, buy cars or properties from abroad. These don't have any practical use but it's nice to be able to control how we use the money we keep stealing each mission.

There are a total of 13 missions but the game isn't long. I 100% completed the game with all achievements earned in 3.3 hours. So depending on your skill it's safe to assume the game could take between 2.5-5 hours to complete. I bought the game with a 30% discount and I believe it's totally worth it. I hope to see more games like this (but with checkpoints please!) so I support such indie developers who make them.