Overview
Thick As Thieves comes from OtherSide Entertainment, the studio founded by Paul Neurath, one of the original creators of Thief and Ultima Underworld. That lineage matters here. This is not a studio making its first heist game by accident. Set in an alternate history version of Edinburgh, the game drops players into a city where the wealthy have consolidated obscene amounts of power, and the only logical response is to rob them blind. The tone sits somewhere between gritty and gleeful, with a premise that leans hard into class conflict without taking itself too seriously.
The setting does a lot of heavy lifting. Alternate history Edinburgh gives OtherSide room to build something visually distinct without the constraints of strict realism. The city's architecture, social hierarchy, and supernatural undercurrents all feed into why heisting here feels different from the modern-day bank jobs that dominate the genre. There is something inherently theatrical about stealing from a corrupt aristocracy in a city that looks like it fell sideways out of Victorian Scotland.
Publisher Megabit Publishing is handling distribution across PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), Xbox, and PlayStation 5, with DualSense support confirmed for the PS5 version including vibration and adaptive trigger effects. The PS5 listing also confirms online play for up to 2 players, with PS Plus required for online co-op.
What kind of heist game is Thick As Thieves?
Thick As Thieves is a co-op heist shooter built around small-crew jobs where planning, coordination, and a fair amount of improvisation determine whether you walk away rich or get caught. Players assemble a crew, case their targets, and execute robberies against the city's elite. The supernatural angle adds wrinkles that go beyond standard guard-dodging and vault-cracking.
Key confirmed features include:
- Co-op heist gameplay for up to 2 players online
- Alternate history Edinburgh setting with supernatural elements
- Action and shooter mechanics alongside stealth-adjacent planning
- Cross-platform availability on PC, Xbox, and PS5
- DualSense adaptive trigger and vibration support on PS5
The action-shooter classification alongside simulation and indie tags suggests Thick As Thieves is not purely a slow-burn stealth game. There is real combat in the mix, which sets it apart from the Payday school of heist games that trend toward loud gunfights as the default. The balance between planning and execution looks to be a defining characteristic.
World and setting: alternate history Edinburgh
Edinburgh as a heist backdrop is genuinely underused. The city's layered geography, with its Old Town closes, underground vaults, and elevated castle district, gives level designers natural verticality and hiding spots without needing to invent them wholesale. The alternate history framing lets OtherSide push that architecture further, adding supernatural elements that feel native to the setting rather than bolted on.
The class warfare premise grounds the fiction. Society's elite hoarding wealth while lower classes struggle is not exactly subtle, but it gives the heists moral weight. Stealing from people who deserve it is a heist genre staple, and Thick As Thieves leans into it with enough specificity that it reads as a creative choice rather than a lazy justification.
Multiplayer and social features
The confirmed 2-player online co-op structure suggests Thick As Thieves is designed around tight crew dynamics rather than the larger chaotic lobbies of games like Payday 3. Two-person heists demand more communication and role clarity. Every decision carries more weight when there is no third or fourth player to cover a mistake.
OtherSide has active community channels running across Discord, Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, and YouTube under the PlayThickAsThieves branding, suggesting ongoing engagement with the player base ahead of launch.
Conclusion
Thick As Thieves brings a developer with genuine stealth and heist genre credentials to a co-op shooter built around robbing the corrupt elite of an alternate history Edinburgh. The 2-player co-op focus, supernatural setting, and action-simulation blend position it as something more considered than a Payday clone. With OtherSide's history of systemic, player-driven design, there is real reason to pay attention to how the heist gameplay actually holds together when it launches May 20, 2026.
