Korthak's first mission Deadly Cure is a really good first effort that hits all the right notes. While it uses Thief 2, the mission is clearly taking after Thief 1 style-wise. Garrett got himself thrown in jail by the Hammerites and must find a way to escape and take revenge on them. As you can imagine, the mission is a bit more involved than this, but a vast majority of the action takes place inside a Hammerite church. The church itself is quite nice, with a wide variety of rooms ranging from prison blocks to a chapel, a dining room, a library, priest quarters and a small, unusually cozy cemetery. Every area of the mission looks pretty good, though some rooms do look a bit bare and could have benefitted from some additional decorations here and there. Sound-wise, this is pretty great and all areas have appropriate sounds to them.

The story is nothing incredible but gets the job done and some bits are actually pretty well done and kept me engaged. There is also a cryptic puzzle for all you completionists out there, which you will probably need to solve if you're playing on Expert considering I found the loot goal to be quite steep in that mode. One criticism I have is that while most of the AIs are placed in such a way that confrontation can be avoided, there is at least one time where you're pretty much guaranteed to get spotted, which is something I'm not too fond of. There is also a pretty obvious invisible wall in one of the outside areas, which is a bit of a shame (a fence would've done the job better).

Deadly Cure reminded me a whole lot of Morrgan's Hammerite FMs — The Saint of Redmound and Returning a Favor, because of its relatively small size, overarching mystery and it taking place inside a single location. Korthak offers us a really good debut that I would've ranked 7.5 if decimals were allowed. It's pleasant, fun and has no busywork.