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!

You can play Tiny Heist online here, or grab the downloadable versions!

[Play Online (Flash)]

[Download for Windows] | [Download for OSX]
[Source Code]

It’s also available to download on itch.io, or to play online on Kongregate and Newgrounds!

Some stray thoughts in no particular order:

  • This will probably be my last flash game. Oh well! Flash had a good run for me – 2008 to 2017 is a long time for a technology to stick around these days! In future, I plan to release my games primarily as HTML5 and desktop versions.
  • On that note, you can try out an experimental HTML5 version of Tiny Heist here! It’s still a little buggy and runs slower than it should, so I’m not including it “officially” above. I built Tiny Heist in my own framework Haxegon, which I’m actively working on, and which should hopefully speed up a lot as time goes on.
  • One of the big things I wanted out of this game was to learn about roguelike design first hand, and it’s definitely a success on that front. I learnt a lot making this. There’s a lot of stuff in this game that’s kind of a mess – things like timing, level generation, enemy design – but at a certain point it became more important to just finish the thing. Next time I try my hand at this genre should be a lot better, I think.
  • OMG it feels good to have this game finished! It’s been so long since I finished a substantial free game. Recently I’ve been knuckling down pretty hard on a big, serious project, so it was nice to vent and work on something lighter for a while.
  • I scaled this game down a lot to get it finished for the end of the year, but a lot of what I love about the project is still in there, though some of it buried very deep. I hope you enjoy playing it and discovering its secrets!
46 thoughts on “Tiny Heist”
  1. After the cold tower floors, the night air is pleasantly warm on the rooftop.

    Having trained on the alpha version the last two weeks, I achieved rank Unstoppable today.

    Cheers!

  2. Hi, I love your work, I love the retro look and simplicity of the graphics with the old style playability of vvvvvv and this game. I just wonder if there is any chance you can explain how to make games like this because I dream of being able to express in a game such a wonderful creativity 🙂

  3. Thank you Terry! Delighted by your reply, I came back to your game today and arrived at The Master rank with 15 gems.

    Happy New Year!

  4. Since the source code is available and the game works fine in mobile browser it would be great if anyone implement tactile controls

  5. This game is brutally hard, but fun! I feel like it would be improved by healing 1HP each time you enter a staircase, though, because sometimes the RNG just screws you over.

  6. Oh, and if you’re into roguelikes, you should check out this fast procedural map generation code. https://github.com/mxgmn/ConvChain

    Connectivity is not guaranteed, but combined with A-star you can break the minimum number of walls between two points and keep the nice looking maps. (just weight floor as 0 and walls as 1, find the shortest path, then remove all walls on that path).

  7. Hello Terry. I just downloaded the game for Mac, tried to run it but it won’t launch. Am using OS X 10.8.5. I tried running it using the Terminal and got an error message saying:
    Could not load module lime@lime_application_create__prime
    logout

    “¦if that helps you out at all.

    (Will send you an e-mail too.)

  8. Dear Terry, Tiny Heist is great!

    I’m still trying to reach rank 5, by way of bringing a certain object to a certain place.

    But it seems they all get rather irritated when I open that chapter!

    The Master (with 16 gems) is my best score so far.

  9. Brilliant simple teeth-gritting fun. I’ve already uninstalled and reinstalled four times since last week. The extent of the secrets outside is boggling.

  10. Awesome game as usual!

    There’s just one thing that REEEALLY bugs me, and that’s that I don’t seem to be able to turn around and shoot my gun at a pursuer as a single move. Similarly, if I’m running from a bot three squares behind me, I should be able to place a banana appropriately, but I can’t… ? OTOH I can for free switch to face in the direction of an adjacent brick wall, e.g. to aim my drill. If this is all intentional then I trust your design, but just wanted to check.

  11. Just to amplify my previous comment: it’s not even a matter of wishing I had more time to shoot in a close chase. Suppose you have found a little cubby in the wall, 1 tile wide and 2 tiles deep. You want to hole up and wait there ready to shoot a bot that appears right outside the cubby. AFAIK there is no way to do this properly, because when you get to the end of the cubby you are facing in the wrong direction and can’t reorient without moving.

  12. Hi Terry, I just wanted to let you know that I’m still at it. Today I reached 29 Gems.

    There’s but one thing that’s puzzling me:

    I didn’t use the singular secret object, but it seems there was no reward. Maybe a shopkeeper on the rooftop paying gems would be a nice idea.

  13. Absolutely fucking amazing game. I have to say this would work perfectly also as an ios release.

    Hours later and I’ve only reached level 10, but love the grind!! 🙂

  14. I found a hard crash bug: using a Signal Jammer on the roof when no cameras are visible on-screen will make the game freeze and crash out. I had three items and figured I’d use it before getting the bomb, but it crashed the game instead.

    Also, here are some other bugs I’ve found:
    – Timing is strange for the order of actions. You can move and press an item key immediately after to use it in the new space, before any enemy actions or attacks in that space. If you stand on a respawning enemy at [1], it will occupy the same space as you, alive, and cameras will detect you instead of being knocked out again.
    – Sometimes you can walk into an adjacent rook’s red area and it will change directions, other times it is solid and lets you face it without taking a turn.
    – If you walk directly in front of a guard that is about to move, it will turn around instead, without detecting you.

    I think the most consistent turn order should be: item key > player move > enemy respawn > enemy knockout > enemy detect 1 square ahead > enemy move > enemy detect range > enemy attack. Most of these “intuition bugs” seem to be related to the action order being something different.

  15. I love this game but atlas my friend has a pc and i dont you ported vvvvvv could you port tiny hiest to Android?

  16. SECRETS AHEAD!!!! SCROLL WITH CAUTION

    If you drill out of the side of one of the levels, you fall to a secret area where you can get some free items. Surrounding is a ring of fire, which you can break through if you’re careful, using the enemies. Is there anything actually past that point?

  17. I completed it. After years I got to the top and took the copter. I found this game to be amazing. So many secrets, such a simple premiss, but so addictive, which is credit to you. If you had a paypal I could send money to I would. I’m just going to buy one of your games instead. This is my favorite flash game ever.

    So many easter eggs you literally are the human incarnation of the easter bunny.

  18. guys i know this is old, but you can get past the fire river withe a skateboard, or sword, then you end up at a cliff face. drill or bomb and go beyond that to get to the glitch area. if you find an exit, you end up in the glitch levels.

  19. I am not sure, my strategy is to go around the corners, because a safe zone of three blocks will appear, and keep on going. And don’t worry this game will never be old and always will be my favorite

  20. I am not sure, my strategy is to go around the corners, because a safe zone of three blocks will appear, and keep on going. And don’t worry this game will never be old and always will be my favourtie

  21. Hi terry, if you see this, I love your games! For copycat, what will happen if you ascend? Because I almost destroyed the weird thing that stays in the middle

  22. Might go into the source code and mod the game and fix a couple things because this has been one of my favorite games since it came out. Consistently playing it for years is insane to think about! Also gives me a lot of ideas for additives.

  23. it crashs half way through for me and just gives me a black screen, can you fix? I have not been able to beat it because of that. 2022

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