Not Recommended

Stealth Bastard Deluxe promises a whole lot with its slick presentation, great graphics and lovely soundtrack. The trailers look nice, it looks like a great little puzzle game, but in spite of its high production values and great promises, this game falls flat due to a number of pitfalls. I do not recommend this.

SBD has great graphics, even if the pixelation filter can get a bit tiring over time and cause eye fatigue. The multiple color schemes for text and menus is a nice option. Graphics are really well made and the smooth lighting really adds to the game's atmosphere and presentation. It has a good soundtrack that doesn't really get old. It is perfectly understated and stays in the background, just giving you something nice to listen to. Sounds are good and none of them irritated me or hurt my ears. They became quite familiar after a while. Top notch.

I am missing volume sliders for both audio and music. The game is LOUD by default, so sliders would've been very welcome. Right now all you get is on or off for both.

There are no resolution settings and the graphics settings in general are severely lacking. You can select full screen or windowed mode and the pixel scale of the graphics (x1 to x3) for a larger window. It does not support arbitrary aspect ratios (aside from Stretched graphics, which look HORRIBLE).

It has a "low spec" mode that supposedly reduces graphical load, but on my laptop, I saw neither a change in graphics, nor in performance using it, so I'm unsure what it does.

All in all, this game hits all the right spots for a great puzzle game. It reminds me a lot of Super Meat Boy mixed with Gunpoint. However, there are primarily three points that makes this game a pain to play (and a fourth annoyance)

The controls are honestly really, really floaty and imprecise. They do not allow you the fine control of your character you would need to play optimally. Every level seems designed for a completely different control scheme and you'll find yourself playing slower and more carefully than you would like because you are just so floaty, both in the air and the ground. The character's momentum is far too overtuned to be a truly enjoyable experience. Top this with the fact that most levels are more dexterity challenges, requiring precise movement, than actual puzzles, and this game quickly because aggrevating to play.

The puzzle aspect of the game is extremely basic and unless you are completely new to puzzle games, you'll figure every puzzle out within seconds of seeing them. It is not, by any stretch, a difficult game when it comes to puzzles.

The problem lies in the fact that the vast majority of levels are "trial and error" challenges. You have no idea what is going to happen when a camera spots you. Will it spawn lasers and kill you? Will it lock down a room, preventing you from progressing? Will it drop you into a death trap? In addition, you have no idea what a button is going to do when pressed, what a trip laser sensor is going to trigger, if what is triggered requires quick reflexes, or if it simply adjust the layout of the level...

All this requires you to play the level over and over and over to figure out what everything does, and by the time you've got it all figured out, it's just a matter of playing the level to the best your dexterity allows (with aforementioned poor controls).

It's simply not a fun challenge at all. You have zero interest in studying the level and trying to figure out how to optimally play it. You end up just running blindly into everything just to see what happens and see the very obvious path forward. It's just really boring and repetitive.

This is the "cherry on the top" that truly turns this into a painfest. I mentioned Super Meat Boy before, a game that also requires frequent restarts and a lot of dexterity challenges. Whereas SMB is all about the dexterity and none of the puzzle aspect, it really just comes down to perfecting movement. To facilitate this, the game INSTANTLY restarts the level when you die, meaning you can immediately get back into a new attempt.

Stealth Bastard Deluxe has a similar level restart feature, but it comes with two problems. The first being that if you die and let the game reset you, you'll end up at a predetermined "checkpoint" in the level, ready to continue. This takes a couple of seconds for the game to snark at you and then reload you. If you allow this, it will hurt your level ranking, as most levels have a "target" of 0 deaths. So dying even once means you can't S rank the level.

So it's in your interest to instead Restart the level with the built-in restart level key. Only problem is, not only does the key have to be held for over a second for the restart to trigger, it also shows a bit marquee animation, similar to when the level starts the first time, delaying your restart attempt EVEN FURTHER.

It's only a couple of seconds, but when you've been grinding a level to shave a few seconds off, it gets exceptionally annoying having to wait, over and over and over and over, for that animation. You end up wasting so much time looking at that marquee.


Whether by incompetence or choice, the leaderboards are neither moderated, nor checked for validity, leading to every single score on there being a blatant cheater. Every single level on the leaderboards has a clear time of 0.1 seconds. Mkay, yeah, that seems legit.

I feel like Stealth Bastard Deluxe had a ton of potential, but the lack of experience with puzzle designs, poor design choices in terms of controls and the restart feature, focusing more on presentation than gameplay, really, really hurts this game to the point where I cannot in good faith recommend it to anyone who enjoys puzzle games, or anyone who loves difficult platformers like Super Meat Boy.

It just...doesn't hold up. I haven't even talked about other features, such as clone abilities and whatnot, but these only really harm your score and every level can be completed without them so they're largely a nothing burger.

Save yourself the frustration. There are far better puzzle games out there. If you like a stealth based game that ACTUALLY challenges your brain, pick up Gunpoint instead.

It's a pretty decent platformer. But, it's not better than some flash games, so I can't recommend buying it.

Sadly, I'm one of the people that after the third chapter got severe and constant slowdown (There's literally no way of fixing this according to the devs). Also, the game starts up in window mode because “xinput1_3.dll not found” and I can't use my controller (The better way of playing this game). I looked online, on discussions and guides, but I couldn't find a solution. The worst part is that this game is probably not getting updated, as it has been abandoned for at least 2 years by the community and the developers, it seems.
I played the PS3 version a while back, so I was really excited to try this game on my PC. I hate to leave a negative review, but I think the game is unplayable.

harder than i needs to be. not fun

I didn't like this game to be honest.
First of all this is not a Stealth game, this is a difficult puzzle platformer. So everybody like me who bought this game thinking it's a 2D stealth game are being deceived with false marketing.
It's level based, there are 8 stages, each with 8 levels so 64 levels + 2 bonus levels after each stage. Those bonus levels however are unlocked only if you clear each level extremely fast. It's ridiculous. I couldn't unlock the bonus levels because I don't like to play fast.

I found most of the levels boring, uninspiring, convoluted. There are games where after 5 minutes you clearly feel you made a mistake at buying it. This time it's not because it's a bad game, but because I don't resonate with the required mechanics and logic of the game at all. I had to consult a you tube walktrough for many levels to be honest. Playing this game reminded me of solving physics homework in high school. I can't comprehend why so many positive reviews. Some levels were ok and logical but most of them were frustrating.
The graphics is bad. Sometimes it's hard to see where you have to go because of the dark environment full of shadows. The story is non existent. You are a clone that is being trained for industrial espionage. When you fail the game likes to mock you with comments which I frankly found arrogant and irritating.
The game is one linear, in each level there is only 1 way of solving the puzzles. Often your actions need to be in synchronicity with the movement of the environment so you have to try and re try until the perfect moment arises for passing through.
Also I didn't like that the robotic "guards" cannot be destroyed in almost all circumstances, but you can only go around them.
I liked the soundtrack. This is only for fanatics of difficult puzzle games. The statistics of the steam achievements clearly show that most of the players didn't even finish the game, but made sure to leave a positive comment after a few levels played, LOL.

Spent 2 bucks so I can't really complain about much. I'll say the stealth is pretty bad but there were some decently designed puzzles here
It isn't bad but probably just not worth your time

More more puzzle than stealth. Also didn't get too far before I started seeing bugs. Things like death would reset the level... but only partially, causing bricks and items to appear where they shouldn't, making the level impossible to complete without resetting the game.

no

This game is excessively, painfully linear. There is one correct path for each level, many hazards that are hidden until you've tripped them, and collectibles that are often hidden behind invisible walls. Gameplay past the first few levels consists of rote memorization of where each hidden trap is. The best term to describe this might be "over-tuned", but I certainly wouldn't call it "fun".