Delightfyl

Delightfyl is a dark first-person stealth game, deliberately modelled on the Thief series, featuring a promising prototype and superb level design. The story centres on the young master thief Yoana, who, together with her partner Zaya, is searching for her own past in a steampunk metropolis. To remain as unseen as possible during her thieving escapades, Yoana uses an arsenal of gadgets such as the iconic Thief bow with various types of arrows, which can, amongst other things, extinguish torches or knock out enemies. Sneaking is a breeze thanks to intuitive light-and-shadow mechanics, making it a real joy to dart from cover to cover through the enemy bandits’ hideout in the extensive prototype. The wide range of difficulty settings ensures that both newcomers and veterans of the genre can find the right challenge for themselves, and the variable mission objectives even lend the prototype a certain degree of replay value. All in all, the project – impressively created by a single developer – appears to be a credible attempt to breathe new life into a genre that has fallen into obscurity.

The DCP Jury 2022