With so few great heist video games out there, the wait for Monaco has seemed especially long.
A couple of years in the making and promised by creator Andy Schatz only for some time in 2012, Monaco is at least a consistent presence at shows like this past weekend's Penny Arcade Expo. That's where I saw it and shot video of one of its escape levels.
To refresh: The game is class-based heist adventure for one to four players. Each player can specialize in skills of their class, emphasizing hacking, snooping or what have you. They work together to steal stuff and reach the getaway car through a series of increasingly complex layouts that are presented as a glorified stack of blueprints. Half the draw is the old-school look and feel, a top-down adventure with simple controls, presented in a lovely blocky style that is so beautiful you should stop reading this and press play on the video.
(There is also a competitive cops vs. robbers competitive mode, but I haven't seen that.)
Schatz says Monaco will be out next year on PC, Mac and at least one console, presumably the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, as a downloadable game.
You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.