Gloomwood is stealthy Victoriana incarnate - and it's already super good

Gloomwood came alive for me when I got outside. This is immersive-sim-ish territory, everything tilted towards horror and stealth. Navigating the lovingly rendered PS1 era visuals, which do help a great deal to make ordinary objects singular and creepy, I awake at the bottom of a pit with nothing but a mysterious ally, taunting me through a nearby grate before offering me a magic ring. The ring allows me to tell when I'm hidden in shadow, and once it's on my hand and the grate has been opened, I start to realise how useful it's going to be.

My ally is nowhere to be seen. Instead I'm in small squirrely rooms, keeping out of the path of patrolling guards, lurking in the dark, moving from one safe spot to the next. I need to get out, which might mean finding the objects needed to call a kind of grain elevator, and may mean busting my swordstick out of a nearby lockup. Gloomwood's linear but roomy: like I say, immersive-sim territory. I always know where I want to go, but my path there has a bit of leeway to it.

Combat I quickly discover, even with the swordstick, is a bad idea. Take guards on and they'll slice your health away and slow you down. So much better to crouch, go slowly, considering the surfaces you're moving across, using the leaning buttons to check around blind corners, using patience, sweet patience, to learn the patrol routes and then go for the one-hit backstab.

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