The Swindle

Fast-paced stealth set to a ticking clock makes this a procedural platformer to savour.

An immensely satisfying mix of platforming, stealth, action, and resource management, with character.

Everything adds up to a game with good ideas that is sorely lacking in refinement – the punitive flaws of The Swindle's meta-structure and procedural generation could have been ameliorated with minor tweaks. This feels 80% of the way to a great game, but that missing 20% soon comes to dominate the rest.

The Swindle is a minor diversion at best, without the comic timing or cunning to turn anyone to a life of crime. A weekend of crime, perhaps, at most.

The Swindle is nowhere near an entirely negative experience. It's a festival of moments, of anecdotes filled with failures and smiles. I found myself holding my breath as I hacked a computer with just enough time to dodge three heavy guards coming my way, jumped over two electricity traps, clung to a wall to let a patrol pass, and bombed myself a new escape route. These pockets of perfection kept me hooked, and made me boot up The Swindle again and again in order to preserve this world of rogues. That, and my dedication to you guys. Now, the Devil's Basilisk is for all of us to share. You're goddamned welcome.

The Swindle is a solid game, but it's a swag bag short of our full recommendation. As a title to play over a weekend – or between other games with more substance – it can't really be knocked, but don't expect to be feeling light fingered forever. This is a cunning con, a solid swizz – but it's been robbed of crime of the century status.

It's hugely clever, chaotic and funny, though there are downsides in the implementation of randomly generated stages and in some technical glitches and flaws. Despite some issues the premise, presentation, music and gameplay all work well together, making this a steal on the Wii U - just not the great heist it could have been.

The story laid within the game doesn't drive the game, but that's okay because there's plenty of rogue-like goodness waiting to be found inside of Size Five Games procedurally generated steampunk heist simulator.

It's hard to fully recommend a game with inconsistent controls, but The Swindle is awfully close to being excellent.  There are a huge number of enemies with different behaviors and the randomized level generator is more than happy to put multiple kinds together in ways that require different strategies to handle.

The Swindle creates a challenging environment for fans of the rogue-like game genre, with a wide variety of ways to achieve heists for maximum profit.