Info about Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream:

Official game description:
Experience an isometric, narrative-driven stealth game set in the stunning city of Eriksholm. When Hanna’s brother, Herman, disappears and the police begin to pursue him, her search sets off a chain of catastrophic events that will not only alter their lives but also the destiny of the entire city. Join your allies, outsmart relentless enemies, and use your cunning to uncover the truth behind Herman’s disappearance — where greater powers are at play than you ever imagined.
Follow Hanna’s adventure through the vibrant streets of Eriksholm, a sprawling Nordic city inspired by the elegance and grit of early 1900s Scandinavia. In this world, every shadow offers a hiding place, and every corner hides a new challenge. Allies and quick reflexes are your greatest tools as you unravel the city's secrets and outsmart your pursuers.
Join Hanna's adventure through Eriksholm on her quest to find her brother and uncover the mystery behind his disappearance. Venture into stunning landscapes in a gripping story where every second counts as Hanna strives to reunite her family.
Switch between three unique characters, and utilize their unique abilities to access new areas, overcome various challenges and puzzles, and outsmart your enemies.
Observe guard behaviors, use environmental cues, and find clever solutions to overcome obstacles. Scout environments carefully, use cover and stealth, and employ diversion tactics to evade detection.
Explore the fictitious world of Eriksholm, a place of beauty, hardship, and adventure, heavily inspired by the Nordic cities of the 1900s.

Release date: 15 Jul, 2025

Categories: Single-player Story, Stealth Gameplay, Puzzle Solving, Strategic Combat, Linear Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Stunning Visuals & Atmosphere (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game's visual fidelity, atmosphere, and artistic direction. The use of advanced technology like MetaHuman and UE5 Lumen contributes to stunning graphics, realistic character expressions, and cinematic cutscenes, creating a deeply immersive world.
- Captivating Story & Characters (weight 0.81): The game's narrative is highly engaging, with a rich, emotional story and well-developed characters brought to life by excellent voice acting. The plot is tightly integrated with gameplay, providing a compelling and immersive experience.
- Engaging Stealth-Puzzle Gameplay (weight 0.79): The gameplay is described as smooth, varied, and intelligently designed, particularly the blend of stealth and puzzles. Levels are well-balanced, offering a satisfying challenge without being overly difficult, making it accessible for both genre veterans and newcomers.
- Highly Enjoyable & Worthwhile (weight 0.7): Many players express strong satisfaction with the game, often purchasing it immediately after playing the demo. The overall experience is described as pleasant, worthwhile, and exceeding expectations, indicating high player enjoyment and value for money.
- Excellent Sound Design (weight 0.39): The game's sound design, including music and sound effects, is consistently highlighted as excellent and fitting, further enhancing the overall immersive experience.
- High Quality & Polished (weight 0.14): The game's quality, even in its demo, impressed players, leading to immediate purchases. The studio, composed of veteran developers, is recognized for delivering a polished and high-quality debut title.

Common complaints:
- Short playtime, high price (weight 0.35): Many players found the game's length to be too short, typically around 10-12 hours, which significantly impacted their perception of its value. This short playtime, combined with limited replayability and simple mechanics, led to a widespread feeling that the game's price was too high for the content offered.
- Simplistic, linear gameplay (weight 0.27): The gameplay is criticized for being overly simplistic, repetitive, and lacking innovation. Players noted a lack of diverse skills for characters, linear level design with single solutions, and basic stealth mechanics with rigid failure penalties. This simplicity and lack of depth led to comparisons with other tactical stealth games, where this game fell short.
- Presence of critical bugs (weight 0.14): Several players reported encountering significant bugs, including game-breaking softlocks, black screen crashes, and issues with character movement and cursor functionality. These technical problems severely impacted the gameplay experience for those affected.
- Minor, subjective issues (weight 0.07): These clusters contain highly subjective, vague, or minor points that do not offer specific, actionable feedback. They range from general criticisms about the developers' capabilities to minor aesthetic preferences or isolated observations that don't represent widespread issues.
- Auto-save only (weight 0.05): The single auto-save mechanism was a point of dissatisfaction for some players, as it removed the option for manual saves and led to arcade-like death penalties with short rollbacks.
- Wooden dialogues, few cutscenes (weight 0.04): Players found the dialogues to be wooden and wished for more engaging cutscenes to enhance the narrative delivery, despite appreciating the overall atmosphere.
- Lack of language support (weight 0.04): A notable drawback for some players was the absence of localized language support, specifically Korean and Polish, which hindered their ability to fully engage with the story.
- Excessive hints, clunky inventory (weight 0.04): Some players felt there were excessive hints from the protagonist, which detracted from the enjoyment of solving puzzles independently. The inventory system was also found to be inconvenient for checking notes.
- Polarizing collectibles (weight 0.02): While collectibles provided lore, some players found the process of finding them all to be tedious and polarizing, impacting their overall enjoyment.

Gameplay feedback:
- Three character tactical gameplay (weight 0.18): The core gameplay revolves around managing three unique characters—Hannah, Alva, and Sebastian—each with distinct abilities. Success requires tactical coordination and combining their skills, such as using Alva's slingshot to distract while Hannah uses darts and Sebastian incapacitates guards.
- Concise playtime, challenging puzzles (weight 0.17): The game offers a concise experience, typically taking around 9-10 hours to complete, even with full achievement hunting and collectible gathering. Puzzles are the primary challenge, often requiring precise timing.
- Detailed stealth mechanics (weight 0.13): Stealth mechanics are detailed, requiring players to consider factors like distance, light, character position, and enemy line of sight. Guards react to various environmental cues, and players must strategically hide bodies and time their movements precisely.
- Narrative-driven stealth puzzle (weight 0.12): The game is primarily a narrative-driven, isometric stealth puzzle experience. It's often compared to a top-down A Plague Tale, focusing on interactive exploration and puzzle-solving rather than complex action.
- Generous autosave checkpoints (weight 0.08): The game utilizes an autosave system with frequent and generous checkpoints, ensuring that players can adapt to challenges without the need for manual quick saves.
- Fair and engaging challenges (weight 0.05): The game's challenges are considered fair, providing enough difficulty to be engaging without being overly punishing or frustrating.
- Gamepad recommended for fluidity (weight 0.03): Playing with a gamepad is recommended for a smoother experience, particularly for camera control, sneaking, and interacting with the game world.
- Simple controls (weight 0.03): The game's controls are noted for their simplicity, making it easy for players to pick up and play.
- Lore through collectibles (weight 0.03): The game's lore and narrative are primarily revealed through collectibles and notes found throughout the levels, encouraging exploration.
- Generous auto-aim (weight 0.03): Actions targeting guards, such as incapacitating them, benefit from a very generous auto-aim feature, simplifying execution.
- Multiple objective routes (weight 0.03): While generally linear, the game offers a few alternative routes to achieve objectives, providing some strategic choice.
- No inventory system (weight 0.03): The game does not feature an inventory system, streamlining the gameplay experience and focusing on character abilities.
- Third-person perspective (weight 0.02): The game is presented from a third-person perspective, providing a clear view of the environment and characters.

Performance notes:
- Excellent PC optimization (weight 0.08): Players consistently report excellent game optimization, allowing for smooth performance even on mid-range hardware like a 3060 laptop at high settings. This indicates the game is well-optimized for a variety of PC configurations.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.34): Many players highly recommend this game, especially for those who enjoy narrative-driven, stealth-puzzle games with exquisite art and cinematic atmosphere. It's seen as a must-buy for fans of the genre, even if the game length is considered short by some.
- Wait for Discount (weight 0.11): While many recommend the game, a significant number of players suggest waiting for a sale or discount, especially if the price-to-game-length ratio is a concern. Discounts of 33% to 40% are anticipated.
- Casual RTT Player Friendly (weight 0.06): The game is well-suited for newcomers or casual players of Real-Time Tactics (RTT) games seeking a relaxed experience. However, it may not satisfy hardcore RTT players who expect high difficulty, complex skill systems, or extensive strategic freedom.
- Gameplay Tips (weight 0.04): Players are advised to avoid looking up information online during their first playthrough to preserve the experience. Additionally, playing with a gamepad is strongly recommended for optimal enjoyment.
- English Language Required (weight 0.02): The game is strongly recommended only for players who are comfortable with playing in English, suggesting that localization or language options might be limited or insufficient for non-English speakers.

Other player notes:
- Immersive world building (weight 0.03): Players appreciate the detailed and immersive world-building. The game's conversations and events contribute to a sense of a dynamic and authentic environment.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.37): Players expressed satisfaction primarily due to the game's high overall quality, encompassing engaging visuals, a compelling story, well-designed puzzles, and effective stealth mechanics. The game met or exceeded expectations, offering good value for money and a polished experience, including solid optimization and fair encounters.
- Disappointment (weight 0.19): Disappointment stemmed mainly from the game's high price relative to its short length, which many felt did not offer sufficient value. Other contributing factors included issues with gameplay mechanics, a perceived lack of content like fewer cutscenes, slow animations, and limited stealth options, as well as specific technical issues like AI problems and lack of language support.
- Appreciation (weight 0.07): Players appreciated the game's mature development quality, especially considering it came from a small developer. This appreciation extended to the developers' effort, skill, and the game's good optimization, alongside its immersive atmosphere and engaging story.
- Admiration (weight 0.07): Admiration was driven by the game's high overall quality, particularly the realistic character faces and expressions, and the attention to detail evident in the cutscenes. The fact that such quality came from a small studio further amplified this admiration.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.06): Enjoyment was a direct result of the overall game experience, specifically highlighting the well-implemented stealth mechanics and the seamless integration of gameplay with the story.
- Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement was generated by the game's unique qualities, its artistic and atmospheric elements, and its perceived potential for future plot developments. The overall quality of the game experience also contributed to this feeling of excitement.
- Frustration (weight 0.05): Frustration arose from encountering game-breaking bugs, a perceived lack of options and limited skills, and the game's linearity, particularly after an easy early game experience.
- Joy (weight 0.04): Joy was experienced due to the overall enjoyment of the game's qualities and the positive impact of regional pricing.
- Mixed feelings (weight 0.04): Mixed feelings were reported due to the game's short length and lack of replayability, especially when considering its price. Players acknowledged the game's flaws but still found aspects to like, particularly regarding the story quality.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope was expressed for future improvements to the game, specifically for bug fixes and general enhancements.
- Curiosity (weight 0.01): Curiosity was sparked by a desire for more lore within the game's universe.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief was felt because the presence of checkpoints prevented the game from becoming unplayable due to challenges or errors.
- Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game was attributed to its exceptional overall quality and the positive experience it provided.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion stemmed from unclear or questionable game design choices made by the developers.}