Monaco XBLA

In a fascinating read over at the Penny Arcade Report, designer Andy Schatz explains that his upcoming XBLA game Monaco is not a stealth game, despite surface-level appearances.

Viewed from a top-down, bird’s-eye-view perspective, Monaco sees up to four players working together to perform a heist; utilizing a variety of thief characters with different abilities, players must break into hazard-filled buildings, making away with money, jewelry and more. But based on this description, Schatz fears that many players may jump to the wrong conclusions about Monaco.

“I suspect when the game comes out, there will be a significant percentage of people who don’t like the game, and the reason will be that it doesn’t hew to standard mechanics of a stealth game,” said Schatz to the Report’s Ben Kuchera.

While sneaking around is indeed a large part of the experience, Schatz contends that Monaco is, like any good heist movie, all about the chase; when a player is spotted and the thieves must make their getaway, that’s when the true magic of Monaco takes place.

“To me, that is what a stealth game is supposed to be. That’s what heist movies do too; there is always something that goes wrong, and the slick thieves come up with a clever way to get away, or there’s a car chase. There’s no heist movie in which the characters are never close to getting caught. That would not be a fun heist movie,” continued Schatz.

Source: Penny Arcade Report