Death's Cold Embrace has a very strong story all the way. Every mission in this campaign is interesting but for me the most exciting ones were: Waking the Dead and The Ritual. I think these two missions had the most thrilling atmosphere.

Waking The Dead has a nice plot twist when the dead in the cemetery get restless and start troubling Hamme...

Clearly a lot of effort went to create this campaign, but some design decisions inexplicably hampered gameplay where it became a chore in some missions. As everyone is fully aware the mantling in this engine seriously flawed, compared to any other Thief game/s. And this created a lot of frustrating WTF moments throughout the campaign.

By the...

“Strange things lurking underfoot” is the basic idea behind this sequel to last year’s Into the Odd, by the same two-author team. ItO was a rambling masterpiece and a punch to the face difficulty-wise; Alcazar is more player-friendly, and its constraints give it a more precise focus. Staying at a local tavern, you notice something interesting in...

At first sight, this is a fan mission whose provenance looks clear: its style is similar to multiple well-known FMs set in dark city districts with a strong vertical element, and using assets which might as well be an author’s signature. However, the signature is false, and the mission isn’t built by the first person you might think of – and the...

Welcome back to the Fan Mission Homage Contest! This mission is built in the style of Mystic Gems 2: Heart of Bohn, and is set in the same city instead of the default Thief setting. The mimicry is pulled off flawlessly – this is an original mission, but the assets, brushwork, atmosphere and lore all connect it to its classic predecessor. The res...

In the Thief mission ecosystem, Mechanists occupy the same evolutionary niche as Nazis do in film: they build elaborate facilities where something goes wrong, and they mess with forces that are not to be messed with. They are, also, not particularly missed when something inexplicably starts massacring them. This makes Mechanist missions great fo...

One common survival horror setting is the “basement horror”, where you are trapped in a horrible basement filled with flesh-eating zombies or mutants, and your only equipment is a feeble light source which is as likely to draw the monsters to you as it is to allow you navigate. Themes of hubris and “what have we wrought!” are also frequently inv...

Thief is not well suited for building forest missions, and most previous attempts have created what seem to be forest-textured corridors with the odd cylindrical tree stuck in to liven things up. This FM is one of those which come close – but if you look behind the façade, the paths still look like corridors. If you accept this (a fault of the e...

In what seems to be an unintended pattern for this contest, this FM is an homage to Sliptip’s Ashen Age: a Mediterranean city at dusk (or dawn), a prominent use of waterways, and a very high-res aesthetic. This mission uses the available space well, seeming larger than it is. There are multiple ways to proceed and accomplish objectives, with sne...

A very vertical city mission centred around a towering Mechanist facility you must infiltrate, surrounded by equally towering high-rises you must plunder. The most successful aspect of the mission is how vertigo-inducing it is – yes, it goes HIGH, and it is a long way down when you slip and fall. And fall you will: navigation can be tricky, and ...

This is an obvious newbie city mission that reminds me of very early 2000s design efforts – the good ones. For all its mistakes and rough edges, it is a good promise, showing imagination and design talent. Sure, the brushwork is blocky and sometimes badly constructed, but there is a willingness to experiment with unusual shapes and shape combina...

Another excellent Thief II mission that treads into Dark Project territory, this one is an homage to (obviously) The Lost City of the first game. Garrett is tasked to uncover the mystery of a lost Keeper expedition to Karath-Din, and make some money along the way.

The story is typical, but developed pretty well in all the usual ways. The real...