I'm a sucker for both retro side scrollers and stealth games, but since we've yet to get Mark of the Ninja 2 or some sort of Splinter Cell demake, I've rarely enjoyed the styles simultaneously. Thinking on it, though, they're a natural fit for one another—after all, premiere blockbuster sneak 'em up Assassin's Creed has a platforming titan lurking in its DNA: Prince of Persia, of which the original AC was nearly a spinoff.
Enter 'stealthvania' The Siege and the Sandfox, which released on Steam this week.
My immediate reaction when I started playing The Siege and the Sandfox was "this is like Metroid by way of Assassin's Creed," and I was both delighted and gobsmacked that I hadn't played much like it.
Where The Siege and the Sandfox differs from other stealth platformers is in that metroidvania layout. The pace is explorative and free, but you'll run into plenty of locked doors and obstacles that can only be overcome with the right upgrade. Instead of rockets and suit forms, though, you get thieves' tools: boots that let you run up walls, a blackjack for knocking out guards, and so on.
The Sandfox is no fighter, so it's best you stay in the shadows, slowly skulk around to keep your footfalls quiet, and put out torches to quash enemies' fields of vision.
It's all familiar once you're past the novelty of the genre mashup, but it's beautifully realized and surprisingly immersive. The pixel art is gorgeous, ranging from opulent desert castles to dank caverns in the bit that I've played, and the game is committed to punctuating your every action.
Hide in the environment and a narrator will chime in that the Sandfox dove out of sight. In a more relaxed platforming section, the narrator might point out that his skills are rusty, but improving. In more intense moments, it might come with a musical sting or foreboding ambience.
On top of that, the game's movement is weightier and more deliberate than the average air-dashing, double-jumping metroidvania. You are nimble—you can roll into a long jump, shimmy up pillars, scale walls, and so on—but it's more reminiscent of a modern parkour system than anything you'd find on the NES. The Sandfox lands with a consequential thud, and he needs to clamber up a ledge when he barely makes a jump.
I can't say how the stealth set pieces themselves will pan out later in the game, but first impressions leave me refreshed. I like the high-octane antics of Blasphemous and Bloodstained just fine, but it's nice to embrace the methodical for a bit and wonder if all those scary guys with weapons down that hallway might actually hurt me.
The Siege and the Sandfox is available on Steam, where it's garnered a small pool of "Mostly Positive" reviews.
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