Nearly 30 years ago, Thief reshaped an entire genre, and now one devoted fan believes he’s found a way to spark that kind of leap once more. Project Shadowglass is being built as a love letter to old-school immersive sims like Thief and System Shock, but with a modern twist that goes far beyond nostalgia. The project is still extremely early, yet its core idea already feels bold enough to stand out.
This week we came across a brand-new game that’s still deep in its earliest stages, and it immediately grabbed our attention. It’s called Project Shadowglass, and its creator describes it as “a 3D pixelated RPG that’s a love letter to classic immersive sims like Thief or System Shock.” If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Steam ecosystem, you’ll know immersive sims are enjoying a quiet resurgence – but this one aims to separate itself with a genuinely unusual piece of tech.
That tech is ray tracing. Since 2018 and the arrival of NVIDIA’s Turing architecture, ray tracing has increasingly become a standard feature across modern PC gaming – so on paper, it doesn’t sound particularly groundbreaking. The real hook of Project Shadowglass, however, is that it uses ray tracing not for visuals, but for audio simulation. Dominick John, the developer behind Starhelm Studios, has shared a short clip on social platforms like X, showing how this concept works in motion.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions, it’s worth stressing that everything shown so far is strictly pre-alpha. According to the developer, what we’re seeing is basically a set of test spaces designed to study, adjust, and refine mechanics, and these environments likely have nothing to do with what the commercial release will look like. With that said, the video itself is still well worth your attention.
If you watch with headphones, you’ll quickly notice that the sound design here isn’t simply “3D audio” (which is fairly common at this point) – it’s actively simulated. In other words, sound physically travels through the environment and reacts to it, the same way cloth physics or destruction systems might. The end goal is obvious: you should be able to pinpoint sound sources even without direct line of sight, while audio realistically distorts and transmits as your character moves through corridors, wide-open spaces, or tightly enclosed rooms.
Sound as a gameplay engine
And that’s exactly why it matters – because it could directly reshape gameplay. It’s far too early to declare anything definitive, but the potential is clear: sound could become an active mechanic rather than passive atmosphere. Think puzzle design built around acoustics, or stealth interactions that let you exploit sound to lure enemies – or, just as importantly, to get yourself detected. That’s part of what made Looking Glass Studios’ original Thief so forward-thinking, with systems that tracked how well you were concealed in darkness versus exposed in light, and how aware enemies were of your presence. In Project Shadowglass, at least for now, we know surfaces will process sound differently, forcing players to think carefully about where they step and how they move.
Of course, the project isn’t only about audio. The footage also highlights convincing physics – objects in the environment react naturally when struck with an arrow, and projectiles behave differently depending on the surface they hit. In terms of progression and structure, we also know the game will feature a day/night cycle that directly influences how you play.
During the day, you’ll invest in tools, weapons, and gadgets to prepare for your next heist, while the night phase is all about infiltration: breaking into fortresses, executing your plan, and stealing mysterious artifacts. If that premise sounds appealing, there’s some bittersweet timing involved: Project Shadowglass is still in early development, and the final release isn’t expected until 2027, though its creator is at least promising a playable demo sometime in 2026. Until then, it can already be wishlisted on Steam.
Source: 3djuegos
