If you’ve played the (now-defunct) Mimimi Games’ incredible trio of stealth games (Shadow Tactics, Desperados III, Shadow Gambit), you may think you know exactly what you’re getting from the upcoming Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream. Made by Swedish developer River End Games, Eriksholm sure looks a lot like a Mimimi title, with its pulled-backed camera perspective, environments littered with places for an enterprising stealth assassin to hide, and a focus on using tricky to outwit guards. But rather than the strategic stealth sandbox of a game like Shadow Tactics, Eriksholm is aiming for a combination of stealth, puzzles, and a tightly linear story — a change that both makes Eriksholm stand out on its own merits and drags it down in the end.
You play as Hanna, a young woman who’s just recovered from a disease called Heartpox, which is currently ravaging both the city of Eriksholm and the larger industrial colonial nation it belongs to. Almost immediately, her brother Herman disappears, and when the police come looking for him, she does the sensible thing and scurries out a heating vent in their home to track him down herself.
