Sneaking and stealth games are often set in historical or political espionage missions. They’ll be full of high stakes and drama. Sipssassin takes a square poke in the face to Assassin’s Creed’s story, and mixes in Metal Gear Solid style sneaking to create a comedic stealth game that’s all about drinking. What starts out as a funny send-up unveils itself as a well-balanced, semi-open world where you can complete your missions any way you want to. Sipssassin is way better than it has any right to be.
The meme and pop culture reference filled story has you going back in time to stop a poisoned drink and change the course of history. There are five time periods built into playable levels that are repurposed for four types of missions. You can complete them in any order, and you have free rein over how you complete those missions. The levels feature lots of interconnected rooms full of people having drinks. There will be places to hide, weapons to pick up, special contextual abilities to use (like putting a bucket over someone’s head), and lots of guards patrolling the levels. Your goal is usually to drink a lot and stay out of sight.
Sipstraction asks you to find and drink six different drinks without getting caught. The quicker you complete the mission and the more you avoid detection, the better grade you’ll get. This involves avoiding cones of vision from the guards, but also distracting the person you’ll steal a drink from. Maybe it’s picking up a banana and swapping the item out. Maybe it is batting them around the head with a baguette to stun them, and then running away. It is up to you, but be aware that guards and drinkers will chase you from room to room until you’ve stayed out of sight for a few seconds. If they catch you, they’ll hit you and you’ll lose health.
Happy Hour is a time attack mode, asking you to drink as many drinks as possible within 2 minutes. If you keep the combo meter going, you can extend the timer beyond 2 minutes, but this mode triggers a lot of special effects that chugging drinks bring. Soda will make you burp, alerting those nearby to your presence. Others change your speed, stamina, or controls. Don’t get too drunk!
Drinkvestigate is a time-bound chase. At first, you’ll need to locate a special drink that alerts you to where a Drinkssassin is, and once you’ve sussed out who it is, you’ll need to beat them to a pulp before they escape the level. I found this mode quite difficult to master because after each hit, the Drinkssassin escapes off-screen, and so they’d often escape before I could catch them.
The last mode opens up all five levels for the player to explore. 50 hidden shards of a chalice, and other secrets like new characters, can be discovered and found here. It is like a sandbox playground and I ended up spending most of my playtime in this mode. Discovering new drinks, secrets, weapons, and gadgets (cardboard box anyone?) to play with showed me just how much creativity a player could delve into. Sipssassin thrives in this mode, especially in the comedic Yeet3 games conference level. It is crammed full of game references.
The cartoon graphics add a lot of personality, and the grey scale graphics keep things clean but stylised. Where it can cause a problem is that judging exactly where to place your character to steal, or swap drinks out, can be a bit wholly. Sometimes you can steal from a distance, and other times you can’t. This kind of fuzziness pops up across the game, and whilst it isn’t a deal breaker, it caused me a fair amount of fiddly faff to line things up nicely to trigger a steal or swap. The open nature of the missions means the difficulty curve is all over the place, too. Levels aren’t harder than others, but sometimes guard patterns and drink placements are a nightmare, and other times there are giant empty spaces to roam and take advantage of. Again, this didn’t hamper my enjoyment too much, but the RNG nature of sandbox challenges means it is a bit of a difficulty rollercoaster.
Despite those niggles, Sipssassin is a unique, joyous, silly, and extremely creative gem. Discovering new ways to steal drinks will keep you entertained for hours. If the tight mission and time limit-based modes aren’t your jam, the exploration mode brings plenty of comedic situations instead. Sipssassin is a great showcase of a solo developer doing their own thing and refusing to compromise on the vision. Fun.
Review copy provided by the developer. Sipssassin is out now on PC.
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