In an industry where high-fidelity graphics are so often associated with triple-A titles, you’d be forgiven for assuming Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is a triple-A title too. But no, this narrative stealth game set in a fictional city reminiscent of industrial-era London reminds us that the big publishers don’t have a monopoly on looking great, offering a 10-15 hour experience of movie-quality story and characters with a solid gameplay foundation to back it up.

Set in the city of Eriksholm (That’s ‘Eriks-holm’, if you’re wondering) within a fictional Nordic country called Rosmark, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream puts you in the shoes of Hanna, a young woman who awakens to learns that the local bobbies are looking for her brother, Herman. Giving them the slip before they can take her in for questioning, she goes in search of Herman, using her skills as an ex-thief to avoid detection. The game takes her all around Eriksholm, from her run-down neighbourhood to abandoned mining tunnels to the manors of the city’s elite. Across a number of chapters, she has to sneak past a maze of various police, guards, and servants that stand in her way. Eventually, she is joined by her old gang boss, Alva, and a caring old man, Sebastian, who help her on her quest to find Herman.

Stealth without the stress

Eriksholm’s gameplay would be best described as a casual stealth game with light puzzle elements, owing to its fairly slow pace and simplicity of mechanics. It’s got all the basic stealth tricks: sneaking past guards, hiding in shadows, memorising patrol patterns, distracting guards with rocks, and taking out streetlights. These mechanics aren’t anything new; you’ve seen all the above in other stealth games like Shadow Tactics, which gives players access to all the above and more far sooner than Eriksholm does. But Shadow Tactics is a very stressful game, and I liked being driven by Eriksholm’s narrative pace. These standard stealth mechanics are spread out across all three characters, not all of whom are available in every chapter, so it makes the game fairly trivial to complete for anyone except genre newbies.

With so much worldbuilding packed into the environment and ambient dialogue, the story doesn’t need to waste time with exposition in its cutscenes. As Hanna skulks past dirty industrial buildings built right alongside the meagre dwellings of the struggling working class, you get a very clear picture of exactly what living in Eriksholm is like. Collectable notes, letters, and leaflets (I love a good readable) sometimes contain clues on how to progress in the area, but are most commonly there just as more flavour or to foreshadow elements of the story. This is the reason why I’m not bothered by the casual stealth gameplay: I’m too engrossed in the world to care. The worldbuilding is done mostly through environmental details and notes, which is always a favourite of mine. Huge, illustrated advertisements about factory jobs and suspect medicines and official PSAs about ‘doing your bit’ to support your country. The conversations Hanna can hear from guards and civilians she passes by contribute to the realness of the world, too.