Compared to the original, Monaco 2 offers new crew members with unique abilities and roles. Some include Cosmo, the Socialist, who uses her charms to distract guards. Siciro, the Surgeon, specializes in knocking them out covertly, whether up close or at range.

Jobbie is the Inside Man, capable of hacking security systems and teleporting past tripwires. Finally, there’s Una, the Brute, taking down guards with bare-knuckle brawling, which is essential for escaping.

Overall, the sequel maintains the chaos and high stakes of the original, while the new 3D style looks sleek. Stay tuned for more details on Monaco 2′s mechanics and other rogues in the coming months.

But that’s not all. On top of adding the new Blonde Class, there will now be a small campaign, Monaco Origins, explaining the backstories for the thieves within the game. So if you’ve ever been curious as to where these colourful characters come from, now’s your chance to find out.

Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is currently available on Steam at 60 percent off. Pick it up today or check out our official review of the game here to see if it’s worth the time (spoiler: it is).

“The 360 delay unquestionably hurt our sales. There was a bug that only occurred on the retail boxes, so we couldn’t have caught it until the game was fully through the certification process (4 player games were disconnecting, pretty much every game). Even when we were submitting a patch for it, we were blind, since we couldn’t actually test to reproduce the problem on the dev kits.

“I was never depending on the Xbox being our primary revenue generator, but I was very disappointed in Xbox sales nonetheless. We put a ton of effort porting the game, and to have that effort be largely wasted was really disappointing.”

Regardless, the game made enough money to pay back its Indie Fund investment, thanks to over $120,000 obtained from pre-orders alone.

The premise is simple: You play as a thief, of which eight different types exist in the game, and execute heists. These heists are throwbacks to old-school movies, and feature their own homages to the same (ably aided by the high rolling 50’s style soundtrack).

You’ll be working through 30 different missions in single-player and committing acts like robbing banks, busting out accomplices and much more. The storyline is deftly handled, relying on a neo-noir presentation and smooth characterizations for each of the thieves.

On its own, the gameplay allows you to sneak around and utilize different abilities to complete your objectives. Four thieves are playable from the outset, including the Locksmith, Pickpocket, Cleaner and Lookout. Each character’s ability is obvious from the outset, as the Locksmith can pick different locks and the Cleaner is skilled at knocking out enemies.

It’s the unlockable characters which provide some interesting alternatives with the Gentleman being an expert in camouflage and the Redhead can charm different enemies into unlocking doors and providing meaningful distractions (besides reviving other team members). It all makes for an awesome single-player experience when you’re just romping through a level and using these different abilities to complete missions in previously undiscovered ways.

The ingenuity extends to the game’s line of sight. Unlike most other top down games, your line of sight mirrors the characters. Your character won’t be able to see what’s beyond a locked door. It creates an awesome sense of suspense, and while hard to adjust to, it also applies to enemies. Duck out of their line of sight, and you’ll never have to worry about them seeing you. The Lookout helps add an extra dimension to this in that she’s the only character type that can see NPCs in a level.

So as a single-player game, Monaco is tons of fun. It’s when you go online and compete alongside three different players (or just cooperate locally on your TV screen) that things get crazier, for the better.

The different character types must all somehow work together to execute plans, coordinating their various abilities to succeed. However, plans can go awry, which results in every one just winging it and doing their thing to quickly succeed.

There’s a measure of competitiveness as well in trying to beat your friends out and attain a higher score, even though missions are one based on cooperative play. This is especially so when going up against tougher enemies armed with weapons like shotguns that can kill you in an instant.

Nonetheless, it’s a blast to play. The game’s minimalist art style and shadowy environments contrast excellently with neon lights and the colour coded characters. The animations of each thief are unique and helps imbue tons more personality than entire scripts can do for some characters in most AAA titles. But it helps that they have great dialogue in the single-player as well.

As an indie title that encompasses the essentials of classic arcade titles in a new wave co-operative approach that also redefines how top-down games are played, Monaco is an excellent title. It comes highly recommended, and its small niggles do nothing to detract from the amazing aura that pulling off a master heist – chaotically or coherently – provide.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine developer and founder of Poketwatch Games, Andy Schatz, has said that he would rather prefer the fans to be disappointed from a delayed release on Xbox Live Arcade rather than getting a broken game in an interview with Edge.

The game was originally supposed to be released on April 24 but was delayed and they still don’t have a date. There was a bug in the game that disconnected online play and unless they find a fix for that they won’t be confirming the release date.

“I think there’s a difference between being upset and being disappointed,” he said. “That comes down to the key point where if we had released the game in a state where a bug really broke it for 4-player matches, people wouldn’t be disappointed, they’d be upset. And rightfully so, because they paid money for a game that doesn’t work. I’d rather have disappointed fans than upset fans.”

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Pocketwatch Games developer Andy Schatz stated on Twitter, “Man our direct sales have been crazy good with all this press. After Steam/Humble fees we’ve grossed $120,000 since December 10. Have to pay back $100K loan from Indie Fund first.”

Considering the game hasn’t even released yet, this is nothing but good news.

Monaco was available for pre-order on the Humble Store in December with Steam pre-orders staring on April 17. Within only three days of its Steam pre-orders, the game garnered $120,000. The official launch date was April 24th.

Monaco is essentially a cooperative heist game that takes place from a top-down view, wherein players will be able to choose specialized thief characters to complete different puzzles.

Speaking to Penny Arcade, he states, “I have a little bit of an unpopular opinion of Kickstarter. I’m really glad for the people that have been really successful on Kickstarter, and don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of free money, but I’m of the opinion that designing a game around a variable budget is a terrible way to design a game.

“To be frank, I think that stretch goals are total bullshit. This is the idealist game designer in me speaking now.

“When you’re designing a game, the way I think you should do it, and not everyone is the same way and I recognise that, but the way you should do it is you figure out what the game is, you figure out what the game needs, and you should make that.”

Schatz has also crowd-funded his game through Indie Fund, being the first game selected. It will receive $100,000 in funding but this is more of a grant – Pocketwatch will need to pay back the money through game sales. Schatz believes this works better for designing games, though he hasn’t ruled out using Kickstarter in the future.

Source: GIBiz