Don't alert the guards.
"Released in the last hour of 2016, I present: Tiny Heist! Scale the tower, avoid patrol bots and reach the rooftop with as many gems as you can find!"
—Terry Cavanagh in his blog.
Tiny Heist is a combination of a Stealth-Based Game, a Roguelike, and a turn-based game where the goal is to escape the tower while collecting as many gems as possible. In order to progress to the next floor, you need to find and go to the staircase at the end of each level. The guards and cameras are looking for intruders, though... If they find you, they'll know that you're an intruder and try to kill you.
Play the game here.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Bomb: The sleeping bombs near the end of the tower. If you get caught by a camera or wake them up, then they will explode and you will take damage.
- Another Dimension: The Error Dimension.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If you have one heart left, then the game will put a First Aid Kit in the next floor. If there's a shopkeeper on the next floor, then they will also sell you a First Aid Kit.
- Artificial Brilliance: The patrol bots. Whenever they are chasing you, if there's two paths for them to go through, they will split up to try and get you, which in some cases can trap you between them, leaving you with no other options but to go but through them and take damage.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Pistol. It has four shots and can instantly kill your target. However, the whole floor will be alerted of your presence and the alarm will sound as though you walked in the view of a camera.
- Blatant Lies: The Matchstick's description. It is not safe to use at all.
- Blow You Away: The Leaf Blower. It blows your enemies away and stun them.
- Boring, but Practical: The Banana. It can be used in place of a key to get through locked doors, stun a guard when he's chasing you, block the entrance so that nothing can spawn, and is one of the only ways to stun Rooks.
- Bragging Rights Reward: The rank you get if you escape the tower. The more gems you collect, the higher the rank you get at the end.
- Breather Episode: If you complete the last level of the purple floors, the next floor is a green bonus room that has no enemies. A shopkeeper offers you keys to unlock locked doors that have items in them. If you already have keys though, you don't have to pay to get extra keys.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Because all the floors are randomly-generated, some of them can end up becoming this trope. For example, if the only way out is with a key, and the key is inside the locked door room. The only way out of this situation is to either have a spare key with you, use an item that is useful in that situation, or just reset.
- Challenge Run:
- Hard mode note makes enemies much harder, making all guards and cameras able to fire lasers at you, their stunned cooldown is less, enemies spawn faster, there's no shopkeepers to sell you anything, and keys are more expensive.
- You can refuse to collect any gems at all for a different ending.
- Common Place Rare:
- The Portable Door. It only spawns in the later levels, is rarer than most other items, and is disguised as a door so you can't find it easily.
- The Fire Extinguisher. If you somehow manage to find it, you are holding one of the best weapons in the game.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: If you get caught by the camera and there's a lot of guards present. Especially if you don't have any items. Good luck trying to survive the fierce and destructive attack that is the millions of guards rushing against you.
- Easter Egg: The Error Dimension. It doesn't have a name in-game, so the Error Dimension is a fan given name because of the "Error" items you get in there.
- Elite Mook:
- The Elite Bots. Not only do they have laser vision, but they also know exactly where you are in the level and will take the shortest path to get you.
- The Terminators. They are the better, more powerful versions of the Elite Bots. Not only do they behave like the Elite Bots, but they have shields so you can't get them, and cardboard boxes don't work against them. Since they can't be stunned by normal means, they will team up and most likely completely overwhelm and defeat you.
- The End of the World as We Know It: You can cause this to the floor you're on if you have a Matchstick. The fire will spread everywhere and through the whole floor, which means if you're not close to an exit, then the fire you caused will get you.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: If the enemies see you, they will take the smartest and quickest moves to get to you. If you want your life, you better not let them see you... The Terminators, Elite Bots, and Rooks already know where you are.
- Flash Step: Using either the Skateboard or Sword will make you hit the nearest wall in front of you in one turn.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- If you get to the later floors and find three stationary question marks in a line, then you can tell it's a vault with an item and two gems inside.
- Similarly, in the later floors, if there's four moving question marks with a stationary question mark in the middle, then you have stumbled upon a rare item, with the challenge being four guards that are guarding the item in question.
- Fragile Speedster: The player. They can travel 2x as fast as the enemies and can use items, like the Skateboard, to travel across the room. But the player can only take three hits, while the enemies can be stunned, but they will always come back, unlike the player.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Nowhere in the game does it tell you that when you buy from the shopkeeper, you get an extra key with the item you purchased.
- You can keep enemies from waking up after being stunned by waiting on top of the stunned enemy. Doing this makes it so that as long as you're standing on top of them, the timer that counts down before a stunned enemy wakes up will pause.
- In order to access hard mode, you need to break through a wall, then reenter the tower.
- Heroic Mime: The player character never speaks once in the whole game. This is a stealth game after all...
- Hoist by His Own Petard: If you place a Matchstick and forget about it. Good luck surviving the massive fire that you caused.
- Infinity +1 Sword:
- The Fire Extinguisher. Not only does it have 6 uses, the most of any item, but it also covers a wide range when you use it, knocking out everyone in the area. It also doesn't alert anybody, unlike the Pistol or the Bomb.
- The Error. When used, it explodes in a 5x5 circular area and fills that area with glitches. There is a small chance that one of the things exploded by the Error is the exit, which you can go into and complete the floor.
- Kill It with Fire: the Matchstick allows you to burn enemies with fire.
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Nintendo Hard: The Error Dimension. Most of it is randomly generated, therefore based on luck, so if you somehow beat it, you are considered one of the best players of Tiny Heist. - No Name Given: The player character's name is never given in the game.
- Not the Intended Use:
- The Fire Extinguisher can put out fires, but you can use it to stun guards, dogs, and cameras.
- The Banana can be used to block the entrance so that the guards don't spawn on the floor you're in.
- Minus World: The Error Dimension. In order to even access it, you need to have at least two barrier-destroying items with you, then break out of a wall in order to fall outside the tower. From there, you need to go far enough where there's a fire lake and use an extinguisher to extinguish the fires. After that, use a barrier-breaking item to destroy the wall, walk through, and find a staircase.
- Only in It for the Money: Your goal is to collect as many gems as possible while not alerting the guards. Averted if you complete the game with no gems. The game will give you a rank of 0 and will tell you you're "not in it for the money."
- Reset Button: Press R to reset and start at the first floor again.
- Retraux: The game's graphics and sound has an 8-bit style.
- Sarcasm Mode: If you find a Matchstick and read the description. "Probably completely safe to use."
- Unwinnable: Sometimes, the game throws an impossible scenario at you: There is a locked door when there are no keys, the cameras pointing at such a direction that it's impossible to bypass, too many guards in a room, a key in a room with a locked door, etc.
- Zerg Rush: The strategy the guards are trying to use against you. This can happen in game if there's a lot of guards present and they're all after you.
GAME OVER - PRESS R TO RESTART
