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Thick as Thieves Gets Patched: Key Rebinds Are In, But That Timer Still Haunts Our Heists
Calling all stealth aficionados and co-op champions! OtherSide Entertainment, the masterminds behind Thick as Thieves, are still hard at work, rolling out patches for their vent-crawling, loot-grabbing escapade. We’re always eager for fresh updates, especially for a game that lets us channel our inner master thief.
Their first patch brought welcome quality-of-life additions like an FOV slider and the much-appreciated option to disable motion blur. It showed they’re listening to player feedback, at least in some areas. OtherSide themselves stated, “there is continued room for improvement and we intend to keep serving that up.” That’s the kind of dedication we love to hear from game developers!
The next update, slated for “sometime in the middle of next week,” brings another crucial feature for this stealth game: key rebindings. For any serious PC gaming player, customizing your controls is practically day-one protocol. It’s fundamental to feeling truly in command of your character.
However, here at The Nerd Bureau, we’ve spotted a glaring omission, a phantom feature that continues to elude our grasp: adjustable or optional mission timers. Thick as Thieves puts you in the boots of an expert infiltrator, snatching valuables solo or with friends, but it’s the clock that often proves to be the true nemesis in this indie game.
While each mission has an overall time limit (usually 30-45 minutes), that’s not the real silent killer. The true villain is the dreaded eight-minute countdown, which activates under specific, often frustrating, conditions:
- It kicks off as soon as you complete any objective, even a single item in a multi-part goal or accidentally collecting too much secondary loot.
- Once triggered, you have a mere eight minutes to locate a randomly spawned exit door. Fail to find it, and mission complete turns into mission failure.
- Compounding the issue: if you’re mid-way through a multi-item objective when the timer expires, you’ll have to re-steal those items on your next attempt. Talk about infuriating!
- And because Thick as Thieves began life with a multiplayer focus, there’s no mid-mission saving to cushion the blow of a poorly timed exit spawn.
The upcoming patch does make one significant change to the timers: the overall mission clock will now be visible on your map from the start, rather than appearing only when almost depleted. It’s a step in the right direction, to be sure.
But let’s be frank: making the timer visible isn’t the same as making it fair or optional. Our biggest concern is that this arbitrary, mission-ending eight-minute countdown is seen by OtherSide Entertainment as an “essential design element” rather than a frustrating mechanic that players should be able to tweak, much like an FOV slider.
The Nerd Bureau Take:
Thick as Thieves has all the ingredients for a truly addictive stealth adventure, from its vent-crawling mechanics to its co-op potential. We appreciate the ongoing commitment to quality-of-life updates, like key rebindings, for this promising PC game. However, until players are given more control over those punishing exit timers, many of us at The Nerd Bureau and AmploWeb might find ourselves leaving our thieving tools in the inventory, waiting for a patch that truly allows us to play our way.
