Thief's Roulette

The puzzle design is good, the art style is appealing, the music if pleasant, and there are no game-breaking bugs aside from one challenge room which has a softlock. All that said, the story and characters are such massive pitfalls in comparison that I really struggle to recommend the game even with those other good aspects. Being a "killing game" type setup, there are 15 characters, including the player, and unfortunately almost none of them are anything close to memorable or fleshed-out. This isn't because the character concepts are bad, you just spend next to no time speaking to any of them at all. Even the optional dialogue sequences you can have with them are frustratingly short, oftentimes only a few sentences long and usually revealing only shadows of the character's actual personality. It felt frustrating to me when I was playing, as I was trying to get to know these characters better so I could be invested in them and care for them, but it felt like the game was just refusing me every time, trying to railroad me back onto the puzzles. The puzzles are good, but without time spend getting to know and care about the characters, a killing game setup fundamentally does not work…

I don't understand what the point of this game really is. The death game aspect serves no purpose other than to bait fans of the genre into a painfully boring story. The true ending just made me annoyed since it felt like a lame justification that everything being bland and confusing is intentional. I had some fun with the puzzles despite getting stuck on some of the obtuse ones. They felt very reminiscent of the free point and click games you'd find on Newgrounds and endured because you had nothing better to play. I went into Thief's Roulette with no real expectations and in the end I'm just left with a feeling of apathy.

For the past few days I've wonder how I should go about it I was one of the people who did additional testing in 2024 and brought up some bugs that still showed up on release As other reviews have pointed out the story doesn't have much to it But the puzzles are fun I don't think that of intentionally did a "scam" I think they just overestimated their ability and all I can say is the game is alright a 3/5 so more of a yes then no but even I know that it's probably just me trying to justify the money I backed Hiro for your next game whatever it may be don't do crowd funding and just take your time, because even if i did enjoy my time with this I would not back another game from you sorry if i'm being too harsh I just know you can make a game better then this

tl;dr - It has some nice ideas, but feels poorly executed in both the storytelling and mechanical aspects of the game. 50% or more sale it might be worth a go if you enjoy the genre, otherwise just skip. Firstly I'd like to say that I want to recommend this game, but in its current state I can't justify the price tag. A game that was backed on kickstarter in 2018 to the tune of $13k has only just been released and has been riddled with bugs. 7+ years for this just feels disappointing. To the developer's credit he has been quick to fix bugs so far on release, but for a game that took so long to come out to feel akin to an early access release leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The writing and characters fall extremely flat for the majority of the game. What could be a fascinating idea is completely marred by poor execution in its storytelling. You can make an argument that part of this is a stylistic choice but playing through the entire game (and the true ending) I have to say it just feels rushed and shallow. If more time and care was taken to flesh things out I think there would be a real story here but as it stands it's just a shallow fragmented story trying to rely on gimmick…

I see a lot of moments of work that could have been done to flesh out a proper branching story with the other characters. The ambition is HUGE for a project like this and I appreciate what he did with the game. 8/10 great work hiromu.

Great puzzles