Burgleville

Burgleville is a 2D, top-down stealth game where you sneak into houses, pick locks, crack safes, steal items and evade the police. You can switch between story missions in hand-crafted locations and exploring procedurally generated neighborhoods and houses. As you progress, you visit new places, meet characters, gain skills and abilities, and make choices that can change the ending.

Missions and locations

Characters each have their own missions, which often involve theft but can also call for sabotage, spying, destroying evidence or babysitting. Some missions allow different approaches that can affect their outcomes. Locations include houses, apartments, mansions, a supermarket, an office, a multi-level ship, a library, a multi-floor hotel and a prison. Characters have their own agendas, and you can decide whether to help them.

You can also enter Quickplay to explore an unlimited number of procedurally generated neighborhoods and sneak around stealing items. Neighborhoods outside the hand-crafted story locations are newly generated each visit, and every house in them is different. Collecting items earns rewards, and additional collectibles are hidden throughout the game.

Skills and stealth

You earn experience as you play, then gain levels and skill points to spend with trainers. You can improve different skills to suit your approach, such as kicking in doors or picking locks, moving faster or carrying more. Lockpicking and cracking safes require learning the relevant ability first; trainers can improve your skill and success rate.

Suspicion decreases over time, while notoriety does not. You can bribe specific people to lower notoriety. Police follow you when your suspicion is high and chase you when you are wanted, so avoid being seen committing crimes. A mask protects you from notoriety but also attracts suspicion, and you can take it off when you are not doing anything illegal.

Choosing what to steal

Your carrying capacity means you have to choose what to take. You can prioritize items needed for a mission or those likely to be valuable, while considering their weight and volume. You only learn an item's value by talking to a fence, though you can remember the value range you have seen for it before. Small, valuable items are often useful choices, but they may not be available to sell right away.

Your safehouse and vehicles

Progressing through the real estate missions gives you a safehouse. You can choose between several layouts and recruit people to provide services such as fencing, bribing and training. Vehicles let you store stolen goods while you are in the city, giving you additional space. You start with a bicycle and can acquire vehicles including a school bus, an ice cream truck, a postal van and a delivery van.

Items and characters

The game contains over 1,200 items, with multiple variants. They include clothing and accessories, toys and electronics, food and drinks, and more. You can change your character's appearance without changing the story. Cats and dogs move around on their own, and some may follow you; skunks are also present.

A relaxed story

Burgleville has no combat or fighting, though the police can catch you. Missions are not timed, and the game is designed to be relaxed, with missions that are not hard to solve. You can return to earlier locations after the ending, so collectibles are not missable.

Game details

The pixel art is hand-drawn, with a cartoony, do-it-yourself style. Details include distinct speech styles and text colors for each character, statistics for most actions, music that changes when you enter a house, idle and changing character poses, animated menus, separate music and sound volume controls, mood-specific NPC sounds, and particle effects. The game has multiple save slots, autosave and manual saving, as well as surprises on the main menu.