This September I attended EGX London, the UK’s largest gaming event where I spent a large majority of my time in the Rezzed area. If you’re not familiar, the Rezzed area is where the independent, small publisher and early access games are shown off to the public. Weaving between the crowds of excited gamers, I came across a quiet-looking stand of a game called ‘The Marvelous Miss Take’ so I sat down and had a play. Immediately after putting on the headphones, I thought “this sounds groovy”.
The stylish and sophisticated Miss Sophia
Groovy indeed it is. The game is based on stealth and deception and reminds me heavily of that heist in Payday 2 where you raid the gallery to steal paintings, except there are no people who are shooting scary guns at you, just beefy guards trying to protect their artwork.
Anyway. The game looks pretty with vibrant colours and cute sparkles; it shows a completely different light upon the stealth genre which is dominated by game series’ such as Thief and Hitman.
The story is very simple but, after all, the game is listed in the casual genre so that is forgivable and although being simple. The story leads the game forward very well giving believable situations. The situation Miss Sophia is in builds a feeling of empathy and brings more excitement as you collect more and more artwork. Once a heist has been completed by Miss Sophia, another playable character met very early on, Harry Carver, can replay the heist to steal more valuable artwork...at night! With different gameplay styles and distraction techniques, Harry Carver brings in another way of playing each mission. Something I really like about the gameplay mechanics is the fact that guards do not have set paths to follow meaning each time you restart a heist, the guards will move differently.
One of the methods to hide away from guards and cameras: smoke!
I see the free pathing of the guards to be both a positive and negative thing though. On the positive side, tactics that you’ve planned for the mission may only work in one way, then if you fail you can restart and your carefully thought through idea might work better and lead you to a success. But a negative side I see with this is that guards may actually make the game a bit easier by not guarding artwork so well, leading to an easy victory. Although it seems I may be picking bits off here, I feel that it can make well designed galleries easy to steal from, which takes away the challenge.
At chapter three, we are introduced to Daisy Hobbs, my favourite character, a pickpocket who lifts keys from guards to steal from safes. Similarly to Harry Carver, you can go back to each gallery and steal the extra fortunes available.
This is the type of game that would work especially well with Steam Workshop integration allowing players to create and share their own levels.
‘Heist failed’. I’ve seen this screen far too many times.
The game can be purchased now through Steam for £14.99