Thieves' Gambit: The Curse of the Black Cat by Dana Duffield

You're the world's greatest jewel thief! Well, second greatest. But if you and your team of talented crooks can steal the Black Cat, the world's unluckiest diamond, you'll be legendary!

The Black Cat has never been stolen, its previous owners all having died under improbably unfortunate circumstances. Break into the palace of San Castellano, pinch the gem, evade the relentless Inspector Leclerc and get away before you succumb to the Curse of the Black Cat!

Play as male or female; gay, straight, or bi. Choose your methods and your motives. Will you be an honorable thief or a ruthless criminal? A technical genius or a master of disguise? Who can you trust, and who will you double-cross?

• 100,000-word tale of adventure and intrigue • Fast cars • High fashion • State-of-the-art spy gadgets • Double-cross or be double-crossed

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Information in this game listing is copyright Dan Fabulich, is taken from IFDB, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Review MisterPibb316

16 May 2015

The free content is the first three chapters, so I'm going to judge solely based on those.

The game starts you off in the middle of action, making decisions that seem to have potential for major impact. I'm not sure it's fair to say things ever slow down, because you'll find yourself making decision after decision--and in my case, none of them resulted in a game over--recruiting people, coming up with plans, and choosing your character's name and orientation, among other things. It does make you more interested in where you're headed than playing as 'nameless player #zillion' would be, undoubtedly.

As for whether I would buy this ChoiceScript (not made in the Quest engine, in case you're curious about that--CS is useful for lengthy, CYOA style games... kind of like Quest gamebooks in that regard, though the text format is larger and there are often many decisions in CS games that may or may not have much of any impact, but can play a role in immersing the player... I'm fond of both engines, personally) game--I don't think so, but that's because Steam, for example, is full of these kinds of games at the same price or cheaper (such as in bundles or during sales events.) That isn't a direct knock on this game, because the three chapters you can freely play build up to the point that you just might get the jitters and want to know how the story ends.

In short: the descriptions of character appearances, intentions, and so on are quite excellent, but I'm unsure that this game stands out on its own the way, say, the Victorian Detective series does. It's a solid game in a field of solid games.

Comment AmberThut

11 Feb 2015

After playing the full game I wanted to add that it's worth the money. It's nice to find a game that actually offers several solid paths to your end goal. Excellent. (and I have played quite a few ChoiceScript games, so that isn't to be taken lightly)

Review AmberThut

11 Feb 2015

After playing the initial free content I have to say that I'm very impressed with the writing of this game. It seems to be very well done! Not only are the personalization options satisfying, but the quality is among the best of it's kind.

I will be purchasing the remaining chapters. Thank you for your contribution!