Has this little bastard got what it takes to impress?
Stealth Bastard Deluxe is a strange game that will appeal to gamers who love Portal and Super Meat Boy, the game feels like a great combination of Portal’s test chambers and Super Meat Boy’s retro look and unforgiving nature. Essentially the objective is to clear each chamber in the quickest time possible, but just figuring out what to do is also very tricky as your character will have to avoid cameras, push blocks, activate switches and computers, as well as time jumps and work out specific laser patterns to reach the exit.
One thing I would recommend is turning up the brightness of the shadows to the maximum setting because I had a devil of a time playing in the dark and finding paths was really difficult, on max brightness you can see everything clearly. Stealth Bastard Deluxe never fails to make you annoyed with some really tough levels that seem so simple on the surface, it doesn’t help that signs pop up around the level that taunt you as you play, but it’s still funny in an almost GLaDOS way.
The team have made plenty of levels for you to get your teeth into, but even then you’ve only scratched the surface. You can make your own levels in the level editor, which takes a bit of getting used to but all the tools are at your disposal and then your levels go online for anyone to test, you can also test other gamers’ creations and the imagination is quite something, there’s a lot of potential here and the real challenge is getting higher up that leaderboard.
Stealth Bastard Deluxe has a retro look like Fez and Super Meat Boy, so it’s not the greatest looker on the market, but it has plenty of charm with the visual style and the levels are very well designed and the community levels also look great. The music is minimal but the tunes are catchy, but not really memorable…you find yourself focusing too hard on the chambers to worry about the music.
The Verdict
Stealth Bastard Deluxe is a great game for Steam customers; it has tons of replay value just through community creations alone and it’s a game I hope makes the leap to consoles.
