Free Platformer Stealth Bastard Now Available
by Craig Getting on November 5, 2011 4:50 PM ESTCurve Studios, the indie developer behind Fluidity and the newly-on-PC action-platformer Explodemon, have just released their retro stealth game Stealth Bastard for free.
Described as a mashup between Metal Gear Solid and Super Meat Boy, Stealth Bastard features 28 levels of 2D sneaking goodness. Even though you’ll occasionally wind up waiting for a robot or camera to turn away from you, the levels do move briskly. They’re also relatively short, which means having to retry one after failure rarely feels like a chore. And you’ll need to replay them several times if you want to nab a good spot on the leaderboards.
The slick SNES-era retro aesthetic suit the stealth-puzzle gameplay well, with bold lighting schemes dynamically transforming the levels as you progress. Instructions pop up on walls à la the most recent Splinter Cell, though they’re a bit more fourth wall-breaking than Sam Fisher’s inner monologue.
Stealth Bastard is a shockingly robust package for the low price of zero dollars. It even features a built-in level editor, and user-created levels are already available for download. The only major bummer is that its release is currently limited to Windows. That said, assuming you don’t mind seeing an ad for Explodemon upon exiting the game, you should give Stealth Bastard a try pronto.
Source: Curve Studios
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
20 Comments
View All Comments
blueeyesm - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Virtual Machine. VMWare player is free.azmodean - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I neither want to pirate windows nor pay MS for their crap OS just to play games, so your "solution" doesn't solve anything.damianrobertjones - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
? It's hardly crap and to think so is quite closed minded.Kamen75 - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
This game looked fairly interesting so I thought I'd put it on my netbook. Waste of time! This game requires a 2ghz dual-core cpu as a minimum system requirement. Seems like this game should run great on a Pentium era processor.piroroadkill - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Gaming.. Netbook.Yeah. This isn't a good comment.
a5cent - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Games like this ran great or even better on technology from 1985 (Amiga / Atari ST) with a 7 MHz clock (Megahertz!). Something is fundamentally wrong when our hardware accelerated UI's on 1 - 3 GHz processors don't offer a comparable experience.GuinnessKMF - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Seriously? You're looking through some rose colored glasses there my friend. You're talking about sprite based games running in pure hardware mode with ~480i at best.You're also talking about games being developed to run on very specific hardware, not free games banged out in what I'm guessing is XNA framework; it's a free game. It might look like a regular 2D platformer, but the lighting is likely rendered through a 3D engine, and run through a filter to intentionally stylize it to look like it does (Kind of like cell shading, you can put shaders in your pipeline to achieve the right look from a 3D scene).
I'm sure if they spent the time they could make it run just fine on cheaper hardware, but they're not exactly asking for money.
MrSpadge - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Have you actually tried running it? CPU reqirements are often not that strict..BTW@a5cent: it may look like 1985 in your memory.. but go ahead and place some screenshots side by side. I guess you're in for a surprise :p
mikbe - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
I love the style of reviews this site does and think I see a way to make it even better: l would like to suggest breaking out the game news into its own category. That way the GPU articles aren't drowned out by all the game ones.Thanks for a fantastic information source.
Craig Getting - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Noted! Still trying to figure out when the GPUs tag is appropriate given its previous association with gaming content. We'll keep working on it.