Phantom Thief - IF

Dash through rooftops. Sneak around guards. Slither past defense systems.

Live the life of a phantom thief in this interactive fiction game. Plan five different heists while managing your time and resources. Fail and go to jail! But you can always try to escape.

Can you stop your brother from going down your father’s dark path, or will you simply screw them over for your own ends?

PLAT THE DEMO NOW

(The game currently features a prologue heist, an interlude chapter about your backstory, and the free roam section of the first chapter. 87k+ words.)

Not in dire straits or anything, but could use some help making some ends meet. Due to currency conversion for me 5 bucks is already pretty big.

Anyone that does, feel free to drop an ask or something. It's not like you need to pay for me to consider suggestions, but might as well, eh?

Also if we reach the goal I could drop an early version of a steamy scene with the detective I mentioned previously. Just for funsies, haha.

Maybe I should consider making a patreon? But if I did it would be only per update, I don't think I can work regularly enough on the game for me to feel good about taking money monthly.

Anyway, thanks for the attention!

The donator's asking for socially awkward sexy fedora detective and punchable in the gut freaky fence steamy smoky smut, or they'd probably break into your house and steal all of your toilet papers. Oh the horror🥀🥀🥀 /j

Also I love the sibling angst so much, i just want to see my MC straight up crying throwing up and blow their nose on Jamie tailored suit out of spite. You don't talk like that to your supportive and kind older sibling!!!!!

I felt the muses touch me when I wrote that 4th wall break lol. It almost didn't exist, but I thought I should think about a couple more things to use the money for, then that came and I felt pretty smug not going to lie haha.

Here's the thing there's actually already an almost done smut scene with the detective in the game. It just isn't accessible because I decided to change my approach to how the detective's story would unfold. At first it was supposed to be flashbacks, but then I thought it would be way better paced if cooperating with them was something you were actively doing during the game.

Yeah, you two meeting is like a power ranger reunion. Just far too much red. But hey, if you're chasing Carmine romantically that foreplay guess isn't that far off.

My bad, the patch notes were worded confusingly. What I meant about it only being flavor text is about the reason why I placed that option in the prologue instead of waiting to place it when it came up organically in the story. The earlier I have that variable, the earlier I can place poly flavor text.

Does that make more sense?

It's not that there won't be options, of course there will, it's that for now this early in the game, it's just there for flavor.

The gala was so fun! Meeting the brother was as sad as I hoped it would be. Poor thing, but also quite scary because what the hell was is up with his new invention? And Carmine! Can't wait to see what is up with her.

Also! I love the writing and humour so much!

I just wanna give Go-Gal hug.

Hey guys, so apparently the segment where you steal Remy's invitation was bugged. The game would skip the actual effect due to a faulty subroutine.

It's fixed now! But if you don't want to play everything again just to see a couple paragraphs, I'll put the text that should happen in that section down below.

BIG SPOILERS BELOW, so be careful everyone else.

OMG, I just blew through the demo a little bit ago, and I was completely riveted the entire time. Seriously, during that Gala heist, I had my jaw drop multiple times. The pacing is really well done! I enjoyed the free rein nature of having activity options with our limited time (which, do the timers stack? For example, if you got like seven timers in this heist and only used a couple, would the extra transfer? Maybe not, from a narrative perspective, but thought I would ask). The story is so compelling, and I think I am most dying to know why my brother was treating my with such contempt when (at least in my playthrough) I was really loving and protective. Distance makes the heart grow bitter, I guess? Sibling angst just hits different. Who's know what I did that hurt my rival thief, and aww, Go-Gal, I feel so bad! Also...the catacombs. Spooky. Seriously, I was so sad when I saw that this updated a couple days ago since it would mean a long wait, but I'm so excited!

Thank you so much! I'm glad to hear the pacing felt good and the surprises were effective!

The timers do not stack between heists. That way there's an added layer of strategy on the part of the player where they have to figure out whether it's the appropriate moment to use their resources or not. This reminds me that I need to place a hint about that in the "Case the Joint" event for the gala many thanks!

And they love you too like you wouldn't believe.

Cheers!

Also Remy??? Very curious what their deal is.

Also the detective has two hearts over their relationship meter. Does that mean anything specific or can any other character get those?

...also 'enbitch' is actually really funny

You can actually find out what Carmine's deal is in this update depending on how your heist goes! It's a reward for a difficult thing to pull off, but IMO the most common way to end the heist is by far more fun and has more content. Still, I'll tell you how to get it if you're interested.

Hearing Jaimie's scene was painful nourishes me I'm glad it felt that way! I think I want to still add a little bit more flavor text depending on some choices, but it should remain the same.

The hearts are counters for every time you flirted with an RO. Currently they don't do anything beside showing how thirsty you are lol. Two is not a lot! You gotta pump those numbers up!

I'm glad enbitch was funny. Coming up with that resulted in a weird mix of pride and embarrassment at the wordplay.

Spoilers below for how to learn Carmine's secret.

Let me start by saying, I messed up on a previous post y'all and I'm so sorry. The update is something like 73k words, not 120 or whatever nonsense I said. Apparently, my dumbass accidentally used the character count for some of the documents pertaining to the update, which inflated the count massively. My bad!

Demo Link for your convenience

Still it's the biggest update yet! Here are the patch notes:

I don't know a lot about coding, but with how you are gamifying this story like it's Persona, you make it look easy and I'm obssessed.

🙏😫

Aww, thank you so much!

Nothing too complex is being done in terms of coding. The most complicated thing that was done is just how the delay icons are displayed funnily enough. Also the way the dreams are chosen weirdly enough. That part is actually a bit messy, but don't tell anyone. It works it's just not well optimized.

Although this would mostly make sense for MCs only wants to have fun and doesn't give a shit about money.

Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi was sold for half a billion dollars in 2017. It is the most expensive painting ever sold. The Mona Lisa has far more prestige, so experts estimate it is worth about double that.

The first thing you do in my game where you play as a thief is to steal the Mona Lisa, or that world's equivalent cleverly named "Monet Lissandro". I know, how do I come up with this stuff?

Kind of hard to setup a game with monetary stakes when the first thing you do should set you up for life, right?

So what did I do? I dropped the price, made it worth less than the Mona Lisa. Then justified that because it's a hot item, half it's value is spent just trying to sell the damn thing.

There's a reason why the Louvre guys went for the jewels and instead of selling them as is, they just melted them.

The last thing I did, I feel was very clever. Because the full transaction would take a while to happen, I set it up so that the player would only receive a small advance, while the full amount would only be received later (hopefully once the game is over or maybe at a later point in the story).

With all that. The challenge of managing your money to buy tools and advantages is kept, and the prestige of the act and painting is also kept.

That said, there is another problem. The main antagonist of the game is a billionaire. Jeff Bezos, cursed be his name, donated 200 million to charities over the course of last year.

I bring this up to say this: I can't get the player to steal anything important from the ultra rich without coming up with a convoluted reason to keep the monetary challenge of the game, because the ultra rich are so unfathomably rich, stealing anything from them would guarantee you an eternal cushy life.

In short, money is bullshit, and so are billionaires.