Have these bros had enough burgling? Apparently not. After two full Burgle Bros, not to mention at least three other wacky stealth games, I think it’s fair to confess to some fatigue. Burgle Bros 3: Future Flip moves the action into the not-too-distant future, where soulless megacorps run the world, intrusive surveillance is ubiquitous, and onesies are the height of fashion.

Apart from the onesies, that could be right now.

In the far future, office floorplans are still 4×4 layouts.

As in previous Burgle Bros, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore a high-security facility, evade some guards, and bust into a locked vault that you definitely don’t have the authorization to open. All these years later, the world has changed very little.

Right away, Future Flip imports many of its predecessors’ tics, not least of which is the hapless nature of your burglars. You know the scene in every heist movie where the crew pores over a blueprint of the place they’re breaking into? No such thing exists in the world of Burgle Bros. You’re flying blind, and the effect is closer to a dungeon dive than a proper heist. This leads to moments of accidental levity, such as when your burglar darts out of a guard’s path only to tumble from an elevated walkway to the level below. Depending on one’s outlook, this could be a comedic beat or an infuriating setback. Personally, I try to remember that we’re playing as cartoon characters.

If anything, those moments are even more present this time around thanks to the “flip” portion of the game’s title. The tiles that make up the facility are more wiggly than before. Some reveal different faces on the ground floor versus the upper level, while others switch sides depending on your activities. This presents a more malleable play space, especially when you’re given access to tricks that can, for instance, teleport you elsewhere in the facility, but demolish the room you’re currently occupying in the process.

The good news is that the stealth system is as strong as ever. Stronger, even. Each of the facility’s two floors is patrolled by a guard — pardon me, a sysadmin. As in previous Burgles, you can see the next few steps of their patrol route, but beyond that you’ll be relying on guesswork and probability to keep hidden.

Oh, and an actual disguise! Rather than heading into the facility with a bright orange I’M A BURGLAR costume like in the previous outings, this time your operatives begin undercover. Their disguised state leaves them less flexible in terms of actions and inventory, but provides an extra layer of insulation from prying eyes. This also presents an additional inflection point. Are you ready to strip out of the office drone outfit or can wring some extra mileage from your disguise before going hot? It’s a clever addition, adding depth to the sneaky stuff while giving the game’s opening turns the feel of a genuine first act.

Sysadmins offer new challenges.

The biggest change comes in the form of those sysadmins. Where previous Burgle Bros staffed their facilities (and casinos) with generic rent-a-cops, Future Flip’s sysadmins are downright nefarious. Their basic programming is identical: they set a target, shuffle over to it, and then set a new target, perhaps wrecking your stealth tokens if they bumped into you along the way.

This time, though, they’re actual people, not to mention components in your larger scheme to crack the facility’s security. Every sysadmin comes with their own suspicion track that ticks upward as you trigger alarms or mill around too long. Once filled, the sysadmin will trigger some awful ability that makes your job all the harder. This gives them some personality, adjusting how you approach and ultimately bypass their patrols.

More importantly, sysadmins must be hacked before you can access your real target, the facility mainframe. In the game’s smartest addition yet, this takes the form of social hacking. Scattered throughout the facility are corporate workers. These guys bumble around the offices, presenting opportunities to hide in the crowd, distract a sysadmin with idle chatter, or even take the fall for your intrusion. What’s more, by chatting up these workers you draw code fragments that can be assembled into the kill codes you need to disable the sysadmins. This, of course, is a testy proposition, requiring you to personally tag the sysadmins with the kill code, and then summoning a more menacing replacement.

In terms of interlocking systems, Burgle Bros has never been more impressive. The facility feels like a living, breathing space. You’re an intruder in disguise, allowing for a few relatively safe exchanges with the guards. Workers can be manipulated to suit your purposes. Even security becomes one more plaything, a stepping stone on the path to your ultimate objective. And these elements often intersect in surprising ways. Gathering code, for instance, is a fraught process, one where a conversation with an office worker might draw untimely attention from a sysadmin. The whole thing feels responsive in an exciting way. More than in previous outings, burglars move up and down levels, shift positions, coordinate exchanges of items and code fragments, and develop little specializations like working a crowd or managing comms. These games have always required teamwork, but now the crew comes across as actual corporate saboteurs.

Stringing together code fragments. It’s hacking, baby!

This does not, I’m sad to say, entirely dispel my fatigue. Every installment of this series has presented its own problems. The inaugural game’s three floors were a drawn-out slog, while the second game’s changeable nature sometimes resulted in wacky scenarios that didn’t always feel entirely playtested.

Future Flip continues the trend of mitigating the preceding entry’s problems while introducing new quibbles of its own. Compared to The Casino Capers, Future Flip is rather strait-laced. Its facility and overlapping security is impressive and a delight to crack, but it still gets long in the tooth, not to mention somewhat repetitive.

At times, it feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube: all repetition and no pizzazz. It’s an imperfect simile — there’s plenty to do! — but a session’s back half looks much like its first half. The same workers getting pumped for intel. The same relative safe zones from sysadmin patrols. The same chokepoints that must be sprinted through. The same gradual churn of code cards. That sameyness only compounds with successive plays. If ever there was a game that would have benefited from some scenario design to shake things up, it’s this one.

Just another face in the crowd…

Still, Future Flip takes the series to new heights. The addition of temporary disguises, guards with personalities, and impressionable office drones turns those four-by-four grids into fascinating spaces to break into and break apart. This is a heist as a cartoon adventure, and even though it sheds some of the previous entry’s sense of wonder, it’s nice to see the Fowers crew pulling another heist of their own.

Although if there is to be a Burgle Bros 4, maybe it’s time to revisit those blueprints.

A complimentary copy of Burgle Bros 3: Future Flip was provided by the publisher.

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