Sniper At Work is a game of crafty first-person assassination with a touch of Hitman’s sandboxing

Sniper At Work is the work of Cherrypick Games, hitherto known for “soothing merge-2 experiences” featuring puppy-eyed princes. The only “twos” you shall be “merging” in Sniper At Work are bullets and faces. The only “cherries” you shall be “picking” are hoodlums in sore need of a skullful of lead. The only princes you shall acknowledge are their royal highnesses Distance, Wind, and Timing.

You may or may not find all that “soothing” – I won’t judge. I will only repeat Nic’s observation from the Maw that Sniper At Work look “a bit like Commandos, a bit like Hitman”, which I would translate to “my comrade in PC gaming, if historic audience trends are any indication you shall do well here”. Right, that’s enough quotation marks for one article. There won’t be any left for the next interview feature at this rate. Here’s the trailer.

And here’s the Steam page. Elevator pitch: this is a stealthy-sandboxy urban execution sim with changeable environments and a heavy emphasis on both planning and plans going awry. Why are you in an elevator? Because you are heading to the roof with your rifle, of course. Mind the CCTV. Here are some features.

Tactical Planning: Scout your targets, choose your vantage points, and get creative with traps, distractions, and tools.

Precision Sniping: Feel the thrill of the perfect shot with realistic ballistics, wind physics, and breathing control.

Upgradable Arsenal: Unlock and customize sniper rifles, gadgets, and tools to handle any situation–or make them worse in the most entertaining way possible.

Dynamic Scenarios: Missions adapt to your decisions (and occasional missteps), keeping keeping every playthrough unpredictable.

Creative Freedom: Choose your approach–subtle, explosive, or delightfully ridiculous–and leave your mark in style.

I’m not wholly convinced by the switches to elevated third-person in the trailer. I can’t figure out how they fit into the rest of the game. Beyond that, yeah, more of this please. It’s not as conceptually ambitious as Children Of The Sun, and the developers have an uphill challenge crafting scenarios as ingenious as those of Hitman, let alone besting a direct rival like Sniper Elite, but it feels like a game you shouldn’t turn your back on. Especially given that it doesn’t have a release date yet. They could strike at any moment.

Cherrypick Games are also working on Angst: A Tale Of Survival, which is a “limbo-like” low-poly trudge through an icy wilderness. The only cherries you shall pick here are chunks of frozen firewood.