Otherside Entertainment have revealed launch pricing details for Thick as Thieves, the alternate 1900s stealth game that has now moved away from PvPvE and become a more traditional, single player and co-op-driven affair. It’ll be a slender experience at release on 20th May, compared to the Thief games that inspired it, with 16 missions and six unlockable gear pieces on two maps that offer “at least” four hours of sneaking.

It’ll also be pretty cheap at $4.99/€4.99/£4.99, however, and Otherside – founded by former Looking Glass bods Paul Neurath and Warren Spector – promise that this is only “an introductory campaign, with the intention of expanding the setting and its stories across future content”. Here’s a new trailer to crouch-walk you through the fundamentals. Big fan of my hideout having a gramophone.

Whether you’ll have to pay for the unspecified expansions remains to be seen, but given that they’re only asking for a fiver at launch, I’d be surprised if they don’t charge for DLC. The developers explain that all this “reflects the team’s desire to bring players into the world sooner, and to give the team the flexibility to develop additional content informed by how players engage with the game.”

The original, PvPvE vision for Thick as Thieves saw players performing heists while trying to wrong-foot and expose each other with their Dishonored-ish abilities. Amongst other things, you could leave a mocking message for other players when you filched the booty. I saw a hands-off build at SGF a year or so back, and it seemed entertaining but a little rickety and devoid of punch. I agree with Oisin that the game is less interesting for becoming a single player and co-op game, but this feels like the correct choice in terms of both minimising project complexity and appeasing fusty Garrett devotees who don’t want randos gatecrashing their heists.

Whether that’ll be enough remains to be seen. Otherside’s past projects include Underworld: Ascendant, which was a woeful mess at launch, though it’s since been updated into the realm of acceptability. I hope they’ve learned plenty from that project. I’m hoping this will be a pocket-sized stealth hit in the vein of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.