Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! developer Size Five Games (formerly Zombie Cow) has announced its next game to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Named The Swindle, it's described as "a steampunk cybercrime caper" and, curiously, "Deus Ex meets Sonic the Hedgehog."

The Swindle will give players a pair of snazzy steampunk gloves and send them off to infiltrate, hack and rob facilities, via the medium of platforming. The gloves can be upgraded to grant bonuses, such as to typing speed, weapons, double-jump boosters, and telekinesis. "And yes," creator Dan Marshall explained to RPS, "you shoot by putting your fingers together in a gun shape, playground style."

Marshall also offered the following splendid explanation of The Swindle, illustrating the different approaches one might take in one's thievery:

At its core, it's a platform game. Running, jumping, shooting, whipping up and down ladders, the usual Megadrive-era mechanics. Where it differs is in your approach to getting in-and-out of a building: you might use telekinesis to lift a rock off a manhole so you can break in through an underground tunnel and bypass all the security guards. Maybe you'll hack a terminal that takes down the security cameras, allowing you to plant explosives by a weak wall, and go in guns blazing. Maybe you'll hop into a guard tower and use the double jump ability to land on the facility's roof, where you can smash through a skylight. That sort of thing.

The Swindle will be released "when it's done." A PC edition is confirmed, and Size Five hopes to release an Xbox 360 version too, "assuming they can resist putting vaginas in it this time." The planned Xbox Live Indie Games version of sex education shooter Privates never saw light of day, due to its explicit content.