Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow was the first new game in the Thief franchise in nearly 11 years when it released in December 2025. I worked on it as part of the programming team, and had a hand in nearly every aspect of its creation.

In Thief VR, you play as Magpie, a cunning young thief who prowls the City in search of loot and treasure to bring back to Cassandra, her fence and only (human) friend. However, as she crawls, climbs, and thieves her way through various neighbourhoods, she finds puzzling and dangerous artefacts that will change the course of her adventures, including a mysterious talking eye...

There were high expectations placed on this revival of the Thief video games franchise, and I'm proud of the game my team and I created. We achieved a combination of things that feel quite unique in the VR market: a light and dark system, in a true stealth experience, with the possibility for full immersion using the headset microphone, and more...

Although my work touched a majority of aspects of the game, I was most involved with the localization system, user interface, and player interactions. Localization underwent a deep change during the project as we decided to pivot away from relying on a third-party plugin, to instead handling every level of localization internally, from CSV tables to localizing components in scenes.

For the UI, I worked closely with artists and designers to make sensible, re-usable menu and button prefabs, which allowed us a lot of flexibility in how we designed our interfaces. These ended up being used in every aspect of the game, and featured custom movement and sound, as well as a "Matrix-style" glyph effect to enhance links to the Thief franchise and its signature mystical bent.

As the first VR title in the Thief franchise, we focused a lot on the interactivity and immersion that the medium offers. Anything that might impede the player's natural dexterity would detract from their experience as a Master Thief. In close collaboration with my colleagues Dan Scales and Dan Bishop, I therefore helped design and implement refinements to our interaction system, making sure it interfaced well with our looting, lockpicking, climbing, combat, and bow mechanics.

Continuing Maze Theory's commitment to multi-platform releases, the game launched simultaneously on Meta Quest 2 & 3, Playstation VR 2, and Steam VR. I made platform-specific modifications and assisted in the porting for all four platforms.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow received positive reviews on launch from a number of publications. Eurogamer's Ian Higton wrote that it feels "like an authentic addition to the [Thief] series", while Marcus Kenneth, writing for CGMagazine, says of Thief VR that "as a translation of everything that made Thief special, and everything VR does best, it’s a remarkably strong showing."