Late at night, local "busybodies" bring gossip to your apartment door. Apparently, Abermore doesn't have a Facebook page. The puddles are back, he says." This puddle of liquid seems to be on a main street in town, and at first glance it looks normal. But when a carriage passes by, no splashing occurs. And although there are reflections, no images are projected. Residents suspect that the depth of the water may be many meters. And everything that falls into it turns to metal.

"It transports itself to and from the city as it pleases," says a busybody."

"It's a small mistake."

If only Aberamour had one small mistake. Somewhere beneath the surface of the game is a perfectly engaging heist simulator, akin to Thief or Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood quests. But it's not just in a puddle; it's drowning in the wrong ocean.

One could argue that Avamore is buggy. Or one could say that Steam gets the credit for completing the level without causing a fuss before you even set foot on any of the levels. I didn't get into the first mission because my mouse cursor remained stuck in the introductory dialog; that after pressing Alt+F4 to reactivate Avamore, I inexplicably earned another achievement to equip myself with a new outfit. That upon entering that mission, the first NPC I encountered immediately fell into a loop, jumping at the sound of my footsteps and then endlessly swinging the lever at the mansion's reporting station. These opening minutes were, sadly, a preview of what was to come.

There is nothing wrong with the premise. In Abermore, you work as a street rat in the "gutters," the lowest level of a huge city that is a mix of medieval and industrial, much like Edinburgh at a steampunk convention. After your Robin Hood-esque leader is captured and imprisoned, you and your fellow conspirators plot a spectacular jailbreak that will take place during the Feast of the Lucky Few, an eclipse celebration that will show the inequality of wealth in a big way. Hopefully, you'll get a few gorgeous goblets along the way to the jailbreak to clarify the point.

At the start of the game, the feast is weeks away. So each night you will be undertaking a small task for a local scoundrel. By clearing out valuables from the mansion, you gain practice, raise funds for better equipment, and improve your reputation with potential collaborators. There is a satisfying sense of procedure in this setting. I get out of bed at noon, walk around the petit hub, take on side quests, and slip into the underground pub where the thieves congregate at night. There, he sells the goods he acquires to the fence, selects tarot cards to improve his abilities, and decides on a job for the night. The game includes an Atlas-style life simulation in which he befriends the regulars, gains their trust, and eventually subdues them to help him on the night of the feast.

It is at work that the problems begin to pile up. The levels have a random element, designed to keep things fresh. You might recognize the layout of the locker rooms and lobby, but these rooms are procedurally combined. But not very effectively.

It is as if every house is a clockwork apartment requiring the attention of a clockmaker. One room has an invisible wall that unexpectedly prevents movement, or the floor is missing and guards and supplies are suspended in mid-air. It is common to walk up a flight of stairs to find that there is an airy gap between two floors, and the location of a guard or butler is visible from above. In the worst case scenario, the gap in the building would expose the building to the elements. This is a much bigger security problem and an insulation nightmare than I or my lockpick.

Sneaking around in these divided spaces is, at the very least, a fundamentally healthy experience. In other words, you become your own insulation, undetected by staff or surveillance cameras. In this way, you gradually map out the building, casing it for gems and rare whiskies, and thinking up creative ways to bypass the crowded corridors.

The latter challenge is enhanced by a crafting system that allows you to improvise lockpicks, sleep darts, and explosives on the fly, as long as you have a recipe and can source the materials from Mark's belongings. More than once, he solved problems he would have otherwise given up on, preventing him from going home empty-handed. [Bananas give health, but banana peels are a trap. Bananas give health, but banana peels are a trap. The pure joy of the early days of YouTube was to watch the owners of this house slip and lose consciousness after responding to the service bell they had rung. But that is undermined by the unresponsive and short-sighted AI. Nevertheless, when complacency leads to discovery, things go downhill fast. The suit of armor comes to life, the gas rises, and the goal becomes secondary to finding a quick exit.

Over time, I found myself half-enjoying the game that could have been, learning to work around the butler and the camera as well as Avamore's many shortcomings. However, I simply cannot recommend the experience enough to fall through the floor or get stuck on a broken dialogue screen that forces you to redo a whole day of hub conversations and inventory management. Even if that dialogue is goofy and introduces you to a sticky vampire, an open-carry swordsman, or an overexcited scientist stuck in quicksand. And not even if that hub is beautifully accompanied by church bells and a tailor maneuvering a sewing machine to the soundtrack's pipe organ. Like the host of [Antiques Roadshow], sliding a particularly large gem across the table elicits an exclamatory "whoosh" from the fence. But the puddles are too many and meters deep.

Disclosure: Former PC Gamer deputy editor Philippa Warr contributed to Abermore.