A quirky experience that doesn’t do enough to give itself staying power.

Sometimes a game doesn’t need an exorbitant amount of depth to be entertaining.

Of course, that really only rings true when it is marketed to the right audience. For instance, look at I am Cat game or Gorilla Tag and its ever-growing list of clones.

These games have no depth, nothing which makes them engaging to a more mature audience – you know, the ones with the money whom virtual reality (VR) is technically geared towards – and certainly no real reason to come back.

The mechanics of swinging your arms around wildly, playing games which are made following the Seinfeld premise, definitely gears these and other free – or less expensive titles – towards the younger audience.

So, it’s no surprise that developers looking for an easy win, would start creating content which seems like it has more to offer than it really does.

Little Thief, developed by MyDearest Inc., was released for the Meta Quest headsets June. 5; it sits as a great example of how a game which looks like it has a lot to offer, ends up being an overly repetitive experience that’s not worth the time.

In Little Thief you are a robot that is sent into an affluent neighbourhood to steal from houses. Now houses being plural here is technically not true. This is because there’s only one house you can ever enter.

The game is essentially a roguelite which sees you head out on run after run, to show your worth as a master thief. Each run you’re given a “mission item” to find and steal, this can range from jewels to trinkets and anything else in between.

Starting off you’re equipped with only your backpack – which can hold up to 20 items – with the goal of grabbing anything of value and escaping without being caught.

This is pretty much the entire game.

Now when you play Little Thief, be warned that there is literally no way to avoid being spotted the second you enter the one house to which you have access. There are two doors to enter, and the one homeowner is always in the same spot – right in the middle of the doors.

There is no way to open a door without making noise – and even after you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars to buy gear, it doesn’t mitigate the sound issues.

Basically, you’re going to be caught immediately, and you’ll spend the rest of the time simply trying to avoid the homeowner and his large frying pan.

When you complete a run, you’ll return to your hideout where you can trade in your wares for money to buy items. There are five thief items which do things like taze the homeowner, shoot water and even track treasure.

These are varying degrees of useful – helpful hint, do not buy the musical tracking flower until the end because it’s pretty useless.

Oh, the taser you can buy is definitely the most useful item as it will incapacitate the homeowner – and cop – for a brief period. It should be noted though that it’s clearly not very powerful because they’ll just get up after a few seconds and come after you again.

Once you’ve bought all these items, you’re pretty much just supposed to keep playing because there are upwards of 400 unique items to steal. So, while completionists can have something to do, the rest of the VR community will be bored after about an hour.

Now that we’ve covered the premise and how it falls short, let’s discuss the other ways where the developer made mistakes.

Firstly, there’s no tutorial – outside of picking up a piece of paper when you first launch the game. This teaches you how to grab and use the backpack, beyond this you’re learning on your own.

As mentioned, there is not a ton to do here so you’re pretty much limited on what actions you can undertake. Jump, grab, and use items is the extent of the game’s mechanics, but it doesn’t excuse omitting a proper tutorial that can walk players through their first run.

The development team seems to want to make you read their pictures for explanations a lot because this is how you have to figure out what each piece of gear does.

How about just a proper written explanation, or perhaps a helpful video?

Other issues include the inability to fix your height if you’re playing seated – you’ll end up feeling like you’re three feet tall and barely be able to see above a shrub – puzzle items not always appearing, and a really bad setup for your robot claws which makes holding items feel extremely awkward.

One of the only things that really stands out here are the puzzles. Now, there aren’t many and some take more brainpower to figure out than others, however, each run these puzzles change things up.

For instance: a keypad will have a different code, and a lock that requires four “keys” will see those keys change. This is probably the only thing that can actually make each run worthwhile; of course there aren’t always clues that are easily available, so it’s expected that some people will avoid these in favour of other items.

Oh, and before we close it out, the graphics are decent here. Definitely cartoonish, but that’s to be expected.

Overall, Little Thief is a short and limited experience that is not going to be appealing to many outside a certain age group.

This game needs an abundance of content to be added and some major overhauls to the way things work. Start by adding more locations, making the neighbourhood more open to roam and perhaps allowing multiple houses to be entered in a run.

All that should be done after some serious consideration for making it easier to remain undetected, not allowing someone to shake off a taser easier than a grizzly bear, and fixing the issues that persist.

As it stands right now, this is game isn’t worth the $10 – and certainly doesn’t deserve the store rating it has.

Little Thief, was reviewed on the Quest 3 after purchasing from the Quest store at full price.