What do you think of Monaco? Jim thought it was entirely delightful, and he was tickled neon pink (and neon every other color) by its roguish charms. This bit of his opinion rainbow, especially, is pertinent: “I particularly like The Hacker because he shows off what teeming systems the levels present. While anyone can hack a computer terminal, The Hacker can use plug sockets to send ‘viruses’ spinning around the level infrastructure. This allows you to disable alarmed doors, security cameras, and so on, but it also gives you an idea of how much there is going on in any single building. It’s a beautiful thing to see buzzing around you. It adds more life to a game that already feels fresh and awake and busy.”

Basically, the levels are brilliantly intricate webs of life, interconnected circulatory systems that you must slice and dice piece-by-piece. But now dismantling is only one side of the coin, because Pocketwatch has released The Mole’s Workshop, a free set of level editing tools with Steam Workshop integration.

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Monaco won the IGF in 2010 with a compelling prototype and a handsome smile. In 2013 it’s being released as a sprawling, brilliantly-composed heist game that is poised, like a ludological cat-burglar, to steal our imaginations. The years of polish show in layers of features and detail, while the core idea that won the IGF – of single or multiplayer replayable heists – continues to produce gold on every playthrough.

This is one of the most important independent games this year, and might well end up being one of the best-loved games of the decade.>

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