The Citadel Project

What Is The Citadel Project?

The Citadel Project is a first-person stealth game from Reliquary Software, a one-person studio, and it launches into early access on Steam November 11, 2026. The pitch borrows openly from Thief: you are weak, you have no magic, direct combat goes badly for you, and the entire game is built around staying unseen in a dark fantasy world.

The setting is a medieval megastructure called the Citadel, the last defense the Ancient Kings raised against something called the Great Storm. An evil force now eats it from the inside. You play an escaped prisoner, nobody special, and your whole job is to move through its alleys, labyrinths, and vertical shafts to find out what happened. Steam tags it Adventure and Early Access, with survival horror elements layered on top of the pure stealth core.

What sells it, as the moKoKil preview put it, is the shadows. Light and dark actually matter here, the way they did in the classics of the genre. You crouch in blackness three feet from a patroller and hold your breath. Reviews from the Thief subreddit have been warm about the mood, calling out the parasite-infected enemies and the crossbow as standout pieces.

The Citadel Project Details

How to Play The Citadel Project

The Core Loop: Read the Light, Then Move

Every area follows the same rhythm. Stop at the entrance and read the light before you move. Torchlit stretches are danger zones, and pools of darkness are safe roads. The shadow system is honest: if you can see into a shadow, an enemy standing in the right light can see out of it too. Plan routes that hop from dark pocket to dark pocket rather than hugging walls in lit corridors.

Lean before you commit. Q and E let you peek around corners without exposing your body, and it is the single highest-value habit in the game. Veteran players in the Steam community threads for Thief-likes describe leaning as bread and butter, and that applies here: kill or slip past a guard from a lean position and you never enter his field of view in the first place.

The Crossbow and Every Bolt Type

The crossbow is your main weapon and your main tool, and bolt selection matters more than aim. Four types confirmed so far:

• Fire bolt. Sets enemies and flammable objects alight. Use it on clusters, or on a lone heavy target you want finished at range. It also lights dark areas, which cuts both ways: the flame helps you see, and it tells everything nearby where you are.
• Rope bolt. Fires a climbable rope into surfaces. This is your escape button and your shortcut. Shoot a high beam, climb, and suddenly the guard chase ends because the path you took does not exist for him.
• Decoy bolt. Makes noise where it lands. Guards walk toward it. Throw it down a corridor you want cleared, then move through the space they just abandoned.
• Moss bolt. Dampens footsteps on the surface it covers. Lay moss over gravel or broken tile before crossing a loud stretch, and you can sprint a short distance without the sound giving you away.

The practical loadout rule: fire for problems, rope for exits, decoy for patrols, moss for floors. If a room resists one bolt type, it usually folds to another.

Combat Is a Last Resort

You are at a disadvantage in direct combat by design. The parasites infecting enemies are the weak point, and severing them is how you bring a target down efficiently, but open fights burn resources and attract more enemies. The intended answer to "spotted" is the rope bolt or a dark corner, not a duel. If you must fight, do it from a lean position with a headshot, then immediately break line of sight because others will investigate.

Surviving the Survival Horror Layer

The lite survival element means resources are finite. Bolts you fire are gone until you scavenge more, so the demo teaches a discipline worth keeping for early access: never spend a specialty bolt on a problem stealth can solve. Check bodies and side rooms for supplies before pushing deeper. The megastructure rewards players who loot patiently and punishes those who treat every guard as a target.

Tips

1. Play the demo first. The free demo (app 5111940) covers the opening systems, and progress gives you a real feel for the shadow mechanics before you buy.
2. Crouch is your default stance. Stand only when you must. The game's sound design punishes running far more than it rewards getting anywhere fast.
3. Save the fire bolt. It is the loudest tool in the kit. A stealth player who never fires it in the first hour is playing correctly.
4. Learn enemy patrol loops before moving. Every guard walks a loop. Watch one full cycle, then move during the gap.
5. Use height. Rope bolts open catwalk routes that skip whole rooms. The vertical path is usually the unguarded one.
6. Expect difficulty. This is a pure stealth game with no combat crutch, closer in spirit to Gloomwood than to action games with stealth tacked on.

What to Expect at Early Access Launch

Reliquary Software launches on November 11, 2026 with a single-player campaign set inside the Citadel, and solo-developer early access usually means a roadmap of new zones and systems over months. Wishlist the Steam page and check the community hub for devlogs before day one. Expect balance changes to bolt economy and shadow detection in the first patches, since those are the systems everything else hangs on.

Comparison With Similar Games

The closest neighbors: Gloomwood, which shares the immersive-sim stealth horror DNA and early access model, and the classic Thief games, whose light-and-shadow gem system this clearly reveres. The Citadel Project differs from both in its dark fantasy skin and its total commitment to stealth. There are no magic spells, no combat skill tree, no fallback. If you bounce off Thief-likes because you turned them into action games, this one will not let you.

FAQ

When does The Citadel Project release? Early access starts November 11, 2026 on Steam for Windows. A free demo is available now.

Is The Citadel Project like Thief? Directly inspired by it. First-person stealth, shadow-based hiding, tools over combat, a crossbow instead of a bow.

Who made it? Reliquary Software, a solo developer. The entire game is one person's work, which the community previews frequently point out.

Is there combat? Yes, but it is deliberately bad as a primary strategy. You are weaker than most enemies face to face. Stealth and assassination from hiding are the intended tools.

What are the crossbow bolt types? Fire bolts ignite targets, rope bolts create climbable ropes, decoy bolts make noise to lure patrols, and moss bolts quiet your footsteps on the surfaces they cover.

How much will it cost? The price has not been announced yet. Check the Steam page close to launch.