'Happy Gloom Year!': The new Gloomwood update is out, and it includes the game's 'largest, most vertical open area' yet

New Blood immersive sim Gloomwood—Thief with guns, if you're nasty—is still a ways off from full release, but it's already well worth your time even in early access. Every update has adorned the in-progress build with wild new zones and features, from cutting-edge rat AI to player-morphing monster juice. This time around, New Blood is promising the game's biggest explorable area yet, which means it's a great time to try all those spooky new toys.

The Hightown Update comes after a short delay, but dropped just in time for a New Year's Day celebration. The release trailer shows off some of the new areas and a new weapon: a revolver with a rifle stock and a scope slapped on.

A teaser blog post on Steam said the new patch contains both "largest, most vertical open area" and "the most sophisticated, lethal and complex enemy force" yet seen in Gloomwood, and shows off more of the new areas, which look suitably gothic and dismal. Back when the patch was delayed around Christmas, developer Dillon Rogers said on X that the new revolver-rifle would help players "tackle those pesky constable snipers."

My experience with Gloomwood is limited, but I do love a stealth game with winding, open spaces to skulk around. Players on Reddit are noticing that Hightown is pretty familiar to the areas used in the demo, and after seeing a side-by-side comparison, it's remarkable how far the game has come since that demo released in 2020. It's also the first time I've internalized that 2020 was six years ago, which as I'm writing it, doesn't feel like it can possibly be true. And yet, here we are.

If the Hightown Update has piqued your interest, Gloomwood is available to buy on Steam.