“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 i...

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 th...

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 re...

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 f...

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 in...

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 ...

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 sn...

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 combin...

A fan mission integrating a warehouse complex, the owners’ rich yet obviously bad-taste residence, and a connecting cellar/tunnel system. This is a smooth, entertaining fan mission whose gameplay mostly relies on exploration – sneaking challenges are fairly modest outside a few trickier ghost spots, and the puzzle element is on the easy side. I...

A museum heist with a surrounding town. Unlike the author’s mission from last year’s TDP contest, this is missing the creative touches and complex gameplay potential which had characterised The Hunt. There is a city section around the museum, but it serves little role in the mission (and the few places you can break into are largely devoid of i...

This is a rather repetitive newbie effort, with blocky and uninteresting architecture, basic AI patrols, and not much of interest except the name of the noble whose house you have to rob, who is called “Sir Dicklon”. We have all played many missions like this. As it is, it is more frustrating than entertaining.

This mission is impossible to discuss without spoilers – this one will restrict itself to *light* ones. The FM takes Garrett to a country estate for a routine burglary. Part of the fun here is in the place itself – it has its own identity that is quite different in look and feel from the places we have visited in Thief, and has an odd Finnish/S...

A city/church mission revolving around the rise of the Mechanists, and their split with the Order of the Hammer, in an interesting, atmospheric Winter environment. The architecture of the mission is labyrinthine in a good way – visually creative, and fun to navigate through either the rooftops or the streets. The places you can visit, and the s...

Polished, original, and challenging from the king of hard missions (there is a separate GORTTUFF difficulty level – you have been warned). Or is it? This mission can be deceptively simple if you approach it that way, and it is easy to walk away from it with just the slightest feeling something is a miss. Was it supposed to be this simple? No, b...

A brass and steel nightmare that emerged from Karras’ mind; a catastrophe unaverted; and a desperate bid to rid the world of Karras before Karras can rid the world of, well, everyone else – this is a hell of an alternate reality mission that asks the question “what if Garrett could not win at Soulforge”, and goes from there, taking us to the gr...

This is an interesting adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little [OH NO! OH NOOOO!] In Christie’s genius story, ten Britons representing a cross-section of society are trapped on an isolated island resort, and start getting killed in macabre ways that seem disturbingly tied to a nursery rhyme. The mission presents the same scenario in three pa...

There are missions which are competent, there are missions which are excellent, and there are missions which are visionary. The second groups win contests; the third expand on our ideas of what Thief can and should be. This mission, clearly in the third category, is like a blow to the skull. It is, honestly, not well placed in the contest theme...