Thievery's hard , yo. That's something Monaco developer Andy Schatz discovered in the process of formulating two new competitive modes for the top-down stealth game. Neither made it to the final released version, but they sound like a lot of fun, and Schatz still hopes that at least one of them will become a future DLC.
Replying to a fan's question on a Reddit AMA , Schatz revealed the two gameplay modes that were cut—Cops and Robbers, and Thief vs. Thief.
"In thief vs thief, players could go to different floors and were trying to collect the most coins before getting the trophy and escaping first," Schatz explains. "But we found that the thief that got out in front early just sucked up all the coins, which reinforced his advantage. So we introduced colored coins: coins that could only be picked up by you. But in the end we felt like there really wasn't enough interaction between players for it to feel fun."
The basis for Cops and Robbers mode, meanwhile, is pretty self-explanatory; the issue with it was balancing. "In the early levels it was too easy for the thieves to win and in the later levels, it was almost impossible for the players to win. When it worked, though, it was incredibly fun!" Schatz says. "I'm still hoping to add this mode at some point."
Sounds like we missed out on some fun stuff—and hey, Monaco was in development so long that we wouldn't have noticed a couple more months for the fleshing-out of these modes, right? Hopefully Schatz eventually gets around to refining them enough for inclusion—I'm dreaming up some options for sabotaging your opponents in Thief vs. Thief mode.
Other questions posed in the AMA revealed some further Monaco tidbits you may not have known about. Some hilarious-sounding thief types didn't make it into the game (another future DLC, perhaps?) He also suggests that many secrets have gone largely unnoticed , and advises players to poke at thin walls.
