Volume

Developer: Bithell Games
Released: Aug 2015
Hours Played: 2.4
Similar To: Cat Burglar / Marvellous Miss Take / Robbery Bob
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Volume, from the makers of Thomas Was Alone, is the archetypal stealth game where sneaking around and nicking money, while avoiding the attention of guards, is your brief.  You'll sneak, hide, distract and outwit the dimwitted guards in much the same way as in The Marvellous Miss Take which came out 10 months prior. However developer Nick Bithell has done plenty to the formula to make this game play out a little differently. Guards, called pawns, are robots built in the shape of humans. These guys patrol areas in set patterns with a conical line of sight highlighted in front of them. It's you're job to pick up all the glowing orbs before heading out to the extraction portal. Again, you'll whistle to distract guards and pick up and throw items like an oddity or a bugle to turn their attention elsewhere allowing you a clear path.
  

BALANCE & PACE

They'll also act brain-dead by staring endlessly at walls and allowing you to pass them by unnoticed while just a few feet away. Turrets, that remain fixed in place but remain annoying get ushered in at around Level 15. All thus far looking very much like Miss Take - What's new you say? Well, apart from plates lying on the floor that emanate noise, Volume's levels are more maze-like making the pathway through them seem less open and more linear. As such, you get liberally scattered checkpoints that save your progress at various welcoming intervals. Additionally, guards can actually see through walls! Thus bringing in a mechanic whereby clinging to the walls hides you from their gaze. It's a thinking-person's game, works fantastically well and probably the top stealth game (of its kind) out there.                 
     

PRESENTATION & DESIGN 

Rather than bright and vibrant fancy art galleries in a cartoon style like TMMT, your setting for this outing takes place in some sort of darker futuristic complex. Levels are called simulations so a level starts artfully with polygons being compressed together to build a whole. Reminding me of the art-style in Klei's Invisible Inc, your ninja-like character skulks around realistically with a suitably cunning and stealthy posture. However, he can only walk and cannot run! Also, unlike the grunts and gasps of guards that signal your cover is blown, Volume emits a burst of music when getting caught; a ditty you might get sick of after repeated mistakes. With just one main colour used for each level and a simple white square representing items like a bugle or an oddity, the graphics may not be complex but do a fine job in absorbing our attention.        
  

PROGRESS SYSTEM

Volume comes packaged with 100 core levels. From the main page, you'll get a list of the level names on the left that reveal themselves and become unlocked as you successfully complete previous ones. Each is introduced by a picture of various characters from the story. On the right, for the more competitive among us, there is a panel showing your best time for each level and how it ranks with others. The top-right shows how much (as a percentage) you have completed (one percent per level). There are also plenty of levels designed by the community, and supported by the developers, that you could have a crack at. Interestingly there is no point system - so finishing a level after being spotted and chased by guards yields no punishment. 
 

CONCLUSION

Coming in with a good deal of momentum after the success of Thomas Was Alone, Volume was generally greeted positively from fans and stands up as a solid game. However, nicking most ideas from the relatively unknown Marvellous Miss Take - and not even listed as a similar title by Steam, this may not be the innovation that a lot of people give NIck Bithell credit for. In fact, reading my entry for the Marvellous Miss Take, sums up a lot that is inherent in this one. There again that title, in turn, got plenty of ideas from earlier games such as the excellent Dynamite Jack and Monaco - What's Mine is Yours. Still, putting Shadow Tactics aside for a moment, for a game that stands fairly tall at the top of the evolutionary process of stealth gaming, Volume is quality and does a very good job.