Sleight of Hand gameplay trailer showcases occult card method in a noir world

Since its announcement in March, it’s looked like Sleight of Hand must be a unbelievable stealth-action sport in a magical noir setting — and now it seems to be like that method, too. Its latest trailer, revealed inside the Day of the Devs 2024: Recreation Awards Model stream, showcases witchy card-slinging gameplay on the gritty streets of Steeple Metropolis for the first time.

Inside the stream, creator Joshua Boggs describes Sleight of Hand as, “Within the occasion you took Metal Gear Secure and adjusted the weapons and devices with taking part in playing cards.” That’s adopted by a shot of the protagonist, Lady Luck, attempting to sneak earlier a guard, solely to set off a brass-backed exclamation stage as she’s seen. The fundamental stealth references don’t end there, each: Lady Luck is voiced by Debi Mae West, who carried out Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Secure. (The model new trailer begins at 37:20 inside the beneath video).

Lady Luck is a retired occult detective who takes on one remaining case to have the ability to destroy her former coven, which has a stranglehold on Steeple Metropolis. The game combines third-person stealth movement with card-based method, and inside the new trailer, these mechanics appear to work in hardboiled harmony. Enjoying playing cards in Sleight of Hand allow Lady Luck to see through partitions, deploy smoke bombs, blind enemies, teleport, sling hexes and crush the entire bones in anyone’s physique, to name a variety of abilities.

Aspect discover: On its face, Sleight of Hand‘s premise is eerily very like Deconstructeam’s The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, an exquisite 2023 sport starring an exiled witch who enacts revenge on her former coven by learning and setting up tarot decks. The video video games are solely fully completely different in some other case — Sleight of Hand is third-person stealth movement and Cosmic Wheel is an isometric narrative affair — and I don’t stage this out on account of I really feel one thing nefarious is occurring. I merely thought it was attention-grabbing. Clearly there was one factor inside the zeitgeist that made card-wielding witchy women a scorching thought at every studios, and it’s fascinating to see how the equivalent conceit can be interpreted in such vastly different methods.

Sleight of Hand seems to be like like a cultured new entry inside the stealth-action fashion, and its witchy noir universe seems to assist various approaches in each encounter. It’s developed and revealed by New Zealand studio RiffRaff Video video games. RiffRaff was initially primarily based by Boggs in 2019 beneath the title MayDay, following the success of his spy-comic sport, Framed. Tencent threw down an undisclosed amount to develop to be a minority investor inside the group in 2022, which is when it modified names to RiffRaff and employed up experience from throughout the globe.

Sleight of Hand wouldn’t have a company launch date, nonetheless it is on observe to hit Steam, Xbox Assortment X/S and Recreation Transfer in 2025.