Ninja Raider

Twelve houses, and in every one of them something that belonged to your clan. You go in through a window at night. Guards walk their rounds, and what each one can see is drawn on the floor in front of them - exactly as the game works it out, so the cone never lies to you. Every footstep throws a ring of sound, and anybody inside that ring comes to look. Tatami is quiet, gravel is loud, and a loose board is louder than either. Hold Shift to creep and you are almost silent and almost stationary; hold Space to run and the whole house hears it. Everything you pick up makes you slower, louder, and visible from further away. That is the entire economy: a room full of silver is a room full of reasons to be caught, and dropping the last thing you took is sometimes the difference between a window and a cell. Four estates, and each one changes the rules rather than the paint. The Merchant's House is tatami and paper walls, where you learn where a man can and cannot see. The River Warehouse has almost no cover and a crawlspace over the top of every wall - guards cannot follow you into it, but they can hear you in it. The Hill Fortress is lit, and standing in lamplight doubles the distance you are spotted from. The Winter Palace ices the flagstones, so you keep going in the direction you were already going, and strings trip wires at ankle height. Being seen is not the end of it. A guard straightens up and shouts before he runs, and that half second is the game giving you a chance. Once the alarm goes, everybody converges, and the night becomes a sprint for the window. What you are really filling in is the Book of Artifacts: twenty-four named pieces, each one a page that is nothing but a silhouette until you carry that piece home. The book remembers your fastest run on each, and whether anybody saw you do it. Rarer pieces are heavier, worth more, and kept further from the window - there is one Fabled artifact in each estate, and the Heart of the Clan is at the back of the last house on the list.