Even though I’m not really all that fond of multiplayer gaming in general, there was something about Stabby that drew me to it. That film noir art style that blended its monochromatic landscape with hints of red looked wonderful, and seemed to fit the style of the game perfectly. And being able to leap from buildings to stab people in the skull? Delightful. I just had to see what the game had to offer.

…which, admittedly isn’t a massive amount at the present stage due to the game being released in early access. Currently there’s some solid single player content on offer and a few multiplayer game modes – although the latter can only be played on a single map at present. As such, this will be more of an impressions on what I’ve played so far, which will be finalised once the game exits early access.

Many thanks to the publisher for the copy.

STAB EVERYTHING
One thing you have to give the developers credit for is that they know how to pick a perfect name. The title ‘Stabby’ pretty much perfectly captures the entire gameplay loop: you climb walls by stabbing them, and you win by stabbing people.

As I said, perfect.

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OK, there’s actually more to the game than that. The daggers are your primary focus, and can be easily summoned to each hand with a quick press of the grip button. Facing downward, they can stab into most surfaces allowing you to climb them; and when jabbed into your victim they can be then moved around so that you can dispose of the bodies easily in the nearest dumpster. Agent 47 would be very pleased!

But you can’t just kill anyone. Whilst you can dispose of targets how you see fit, there are also innocent NPCs who shouldn’t be killed. To identify these, you need to throw a knife into them and see what colour they appear. If they glow red, they’re a target; if they glow green, they’re innocent. It is admittedly very odd that knives won’t kill people when thrown (heck, people don’t even react), but the game’s death dagger power-up will charge them up to make them lethal whilst also automatically highlighting any targets in the area.

Aside from your dagger, you have an essentially useless sword and an almost useless grappling hook. Both of these are pretty contextual and there’s rarely any need to use them in the multiplayer game mode. The main problem I had with the latter is that you’re supposedly able to swing through the air using it, but I never got it to work. Pulling yourself towards things is fine, but I never pulled off a single swing. Thankfully the moments in the tutorial and the challenges that use the grapple never need use to use this technique as you can quite easily bypass it by other means, but it still feels rather under-baked.

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The multiplayer mode currently contains three multiplayer modes, with another coming at the end of summer: there’s the classic mode where you need to hunt down the correct target and eliminate them before the other assassins do; a king of the hill mode where you defend an area against rival stabbers; and finally a tag mode where everyone fights to be the last stabber standing. As I mentioned earlier, only one map is present but there are two more planned for the future.

During my time with the game, I was only able to play the classic mode as the other modes required a minimum of two people to play – something that I found impossible prior to launch. Starting in the middle of the small city map, you’ll notice various NPCs roaming around. One of them is considered a target whilst the others are all innocents. The idea is that you need to identify, assassinate, and hide the target in order to achieve maximum points – at which point, a new target is selected from the NPCs and the loop continues.

Playing by yourself allows you to familiarise yourself with the square map, noting the drone routes as well as where the death dagger power-ups spawn. The latter of which proves to be especially important since acquiring them essentially guarantees you a win due to them telling you exactly which NPC is the target and giving you the means to take them out from a distance. As a result, it turns the mode into a race to this overpowered item and negates any real need for stealth and tactics. Of course, perhaps with a large number of players, this advantage will be negated but that’s hard to say at present.

Thankfully though, there’s more to the game than just the multiplayer, and that is where I ended up having the most fun. In addition to the three rather solid tutorial segments, there are also five challenge levels that have you trying to traverse the level and take down the targets before the time runs out. These stages are a lot of fun, and there are often various ways to get through them.

Unfortunately there are also quite a few bugs too that caused me to fall through walls, spawn with my chest in the floor, have my daggers dislodge themselves from the wall, and so on. The second challenge mission in particular took me a long time to pass because the game just continually kept breaking on me. Yet I still kept playing. And the reason for that is because these missions are incredibly enjoyable even with all of these bugs. I really hope the development team are able to fix theses issues quickly in a post-launch patch, as these missions are quite honestly the highlight of the game.

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Overall, there’s a solid foundation to Stabby that promises a lot of fun as the updates start coming. In addition to the two extra maps, which appear to be more complex due to the addition of new enemies, there are also going to be extra challenge missions for each map and a whole range of extra cosmetics. The ones currently available to unlock are pretty cool, particularly the dagger skins, so I’m quite looking forward to what else they’ll bring.

As for my own personal wishes, I hope that they manage to fix the bugs and perhaps make some alterations to the multiplayer in order to encourage more stealth – maybe they could allow other assassins to temporarily slow you down with thrown knives if they see you. Either way, I think that if the multiplayer mode is going to be pushed as the game’s main selling point, they should probably look at tweaking it slight to ensure it’s more fun. At the moment, I’d recommend the game based on the single player content, but I’d be slightly more hesitant to recommend as a multiplayer experience. And I really hope that work can be done to change that.

VERDICT
For a game advertised as a multiplayer experience, the real joy of Stabby lies in its single player challenges. Part of that is down to how much fun they are to play, but admittedly it’s also down to the multiplayer lacking a sense of balance to encourage its stealth-based dagger action. Perhaps it will be more enjoyable when more people start playing the game and the map gets filled with assassins, but at the moment I think it’s hard to recommend for anyone looking for a new multiplayer addiction.