Great stealth games are basically forever games. Whether or not they’re boosted with regular live service jabs like a Hitman, it always feels like it’s worth returning to a Dishonored, or a Metal Gear, or a Desperados 3. Always ways to finesse or experiment or utterly style on encounters you’ve slipped your way through dozens of times before. If you love stealth, you’ve likely got a library full of such games you’ve been meaning to get back to at some point. If you don’t, you’ve likely been put off somewhere along the line by the sort of tired and punishing design tropes Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is full of. Naturally, I don’t think it’s worth your time either way.
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This isn’t a full review of Eriksholm, simply because after five or so hours, I didn’t fancy playing any more. Maybe it gets amazing after five hours and one minute. Oh, I still don’t like it. Yeah but what if it gets amazing after five hours and two minutes? You can probably tell by now this is sunk cost at its silliest. Lots of games to review, and I have to draw the line somewhere. So, here’s some impressions based on the time I did spend with it. Apologies to Erik, I’m sure he’s very nice.
Basics first. You play as Hanna, out to find her younger brother before the evil cockernee police do. The vibe is basically booktok Oliver Twist. The game has insta-fail stealth if either Hanna or a body she’s sedated with her blowdart gun is spotted. This isn’t my preference, but it is a choice the game has made. So, let’s have a look at it in context, rather than judge it based on an ideal, alternative version of Eriksholm with interesting ways of dealing with getting spotted, even if I agree with Brendy’s assessment that this approach is conceptually quite dull. What does this add to the game that wouldn’t be there without it? And how does the game approach the rules of encounter design to compensate for your own lack of recovery options?
Well, this approach does serve both disempowerment and tension, which are both worthy goals that can take a hit when you’re not all that worried about getting spotted. That the world doesn’t feel threatening enough, outside of this dry and disciplinary failure binary, to make the most of these elements is something I’ll touch on in a bit. My main issue is that Eriksholm’s encounters aren’t really convincing as stealth bits as much as they are Simon-says memory games, often with a single correct response. Lights flicker in patterns as you dart between shadows to set rhythms, and patrol paths box you in to taking set routes through mazes of cover, often all but preventing you getting it right on the first try.
This memory game problem is made all the worse by the game’s insistence on dotting every area with scripted guard behaviour scenes. I need to cross a noisy metal floor to progress, so I’ll have to turn a crank to power up some loud machinery first. As soon as I turn the crank, three guards start chatting to each other, then change their patrol paths. This is one of the least egregious triggers in a game full of them, but they all contribute to a stealth system that’s based on trial and error and repetition – on knowing how a scene will play out in advance – rather than manipulating a fixed and predictable set of behaviours.
Ok, sure. Again, that’s a choice, right? But then some guards seem to have a scripted – rather than set – amount of time they’ll check out specific spots when distracted, too. I walk over a metal grate deliberately because that’s the one option the game has offered me for this particular sequence. One guard checks it out for a couple of seconds before returning to his spot, the other guard is scripted to shine his flashlight down a nearby hole forever, giving me a chance to sneak by. You often hear unforgiving difficulty being described as “cheap” but it works both ways. I don’t want a stealth game to cheat in my favour because not only does it feel cheap in the moment, it means I’ve got no real baseline to predict how future encounters are going to work. Strict and fickle at the same time. What an awful combination.
Another strange combination: Eriksholm can’t decide whether you can predict the future, as above, or whether you’re stupid. “No. I need to load everything on to the conveyor belt”, Hanna comments during a crane puzzle – and by ‘puzzle’ I mean ‘perform the steps-zle’. Okay. Sure Hanna. Fair enough. “That’ll create a cover”. Right. Fine, fine. I might have liked to work that out for myself, but you’re just trying to help. No worries. “…and that’ll let me hide from the police”. The police, you say? The police that are right outside the warehouse, Hanna? Those ones? The police that have been hunting me from the start of the game, and are right this minute preventing me from progressing past the tracks outside? Those police? Them policey-weesy rozzer-me-doos right there, Hanna? Thanks for clarifying, truly.
The buildings are beautiful though, right? Look at that layered and ramshackle slum architecture. Phwoar. And you can fine-tune your own difficulty on the fly by deciding whether to hunt for collectables. That’s a great touch. I can forgive so much if a game’s atmosphere hooks me, but for a story about disease and crime and corrupt police, Eriksholm just feels safe and toothless. In a game going for the same tension and disempowerment that marries the stealth and horror genres, safe and toothless is a death sentence for creating the sort of atmosphere that would make all that sneaking feel potent to begin with.
“These are not nice people”, Hanna comments, tiptoeing through a smugglers den. Could have fooled me, they seem quite amiable. The only indication I have that they’re not nice is that the game is making me hide from them. You don’t have to make a game about grim things. Many wonderful games are silly, whimsical, wholesome. But if you’re going to gesture at this stuff, follow through or it just comes across as blunted and bubble wrapped.
Two encounters made me eventually quit Eriksholm. One funny but depressing, one just plain infuriating. The first was when, under no pressure from enemies or any other kind of danger, I pulled a lever to open a gate, and the game starting playing triumphant John William-ish music swells like I’d narrowly escaped being crushed by boulder or something. Patronised by string instruments, once again.
The coup de grâce came shortly after. I had to activate some contraption or other by pulling the right lever. To find that lever, I had to trace the correct valve across a wide area. The lighting was terrible, which as far as I can tell was the point of challenge. So your puzzle design is… making me untangle USB cords in the dark without my glasses. Wonderful. Welp, that’s me then. Sorry Erik. Lovely holm, by the way.