Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is an isometric stealth game featuring a rich narrative, excellent voice acting, and one of the better implementations of Unreal Engine 5’s metahuman character models that I’ve seen to date. You will play as Hannah, a young woman searching for her brother after he goes missing. With her trusty sedative-laced blow darts, you’ll sneak and creep your way through roughly 8 hours or so of thoroughly enjoyable stealth-narrative action. This is one of my bigger surprises of 2025, a game I hadn’t heard of until a day before the review code came in, and I couldn’t be happier that I got to experience it.
Eriksholm
The game takes place in what feels like a late 19th-century alt-history version of Northern Europe. Everyone in the English dub has a posh British accent, but nothing here feels English to me. The game begins with a stunningly good-looking cutscene for the budget. Unless I’m mistaken, this is Unreal Engine 5’s metahuman character model tech used extremely well. The character models look great as they properly animate and enunciate every syllable.
None of that would matter if the writing and voice acting didn’t keep up, but boy howdy, do they. As you go through the game, Hannah will be joined by others, adding to the narrative and gameplay in ways that keep the game feeling fresh. The story had a few twists and turns that I didn’t fully buy into. The end and results of Hannah’s journey hit me hard in the feels, as she and others grew in realistic ways. They weren’t always fully satisfying, but that is life. We can’t always get what we want.
Stealth-Narrative Action
Eriksholm has little combat; the majority of the game involves figuring out how to quietly sneak past or subdue guards patrolling various areas. Every section of the game is its only little “how to get from A to B” puzzle. To get through these areas, you’ll mostly move with the left stick, trying your best to stick to the shadows or behind waist-high obstructions. Hannah has a blow dart that she can use to sedate guards. Using it can be tricky as the second a guard spots you (with a white line slowly progressing towards you), the game is over, and you’re brought to your most recent checkpoint.
Hannah’s dart takes a few seconds to activate sleepy time, so hitting guards from behind and ducking back into cover is crucial early on. Later levels afford new options to trick or quickly silence guards. The lighting system works well, making it obvious when and where you’ll have to snuff out the various lightbulbs strewn inside of the game’s good-looking environments.
The game’s mechanics open up in a natural, brilliant way that I do not want to spoil. I think the developers have done a solid job of consistently tweaking how you get through each play space without it feeling forced. This is a realistic world, outside of the automaton-like paths that guards take. You will have to remember those patterns and properly time your stuns, misdirections, and often drag unconscious enemies out of anyone else’s line of sight.
Properly Pretty
Playing on PC, as Xbox code wasn’t ready before launch, performance was stellar. The camera is pulled out a fair bit by default. On my beefy home PC, I had hundreds of FPS to play with at 4k. On my Steam Deck, even in 15-watt mode, I was getting a solid 45 FPS. I have little worry that the Xbox Series consoles will struggle with this surprisingly pretty game.
Eriksholm makes great use of Unreal Engine 5’s feature set. During cutscenes, it can be jaw-dropping how well animated the high-quality character models are. As far as the gameplay goes, the camera used means that the detail level doesn’t need to be as high. The character models look and animate decently in comparison. Backgrounds can become a bit repetitive during the hour-long chapters (of which there are 8). Their overall quality is high, thanks to the game’s excellent use of lighting.
My favorite part, outside of how well crafted the gameplay can be, is the narrative itself. Thanks to some solid writing, a plot rife with interesting mysteries, solid answers by the end, and excellent voiceovers, Eriksholm is a game whose cutscenes you should not skip. The soundtrack helps set the tone of this world full of terrible working conditions, class warfare, and occasionally some brilliantly emotional moments.
Wrapping Things Up
Eriksholm is a tough game to fully review, as giving away the gameplay mechanics and plot elements that made me enjoy it should be experienced without spoilers. If you have the time, in this never-ending deluge of excellent games, consider adding this one to the backlog. It’s fun and not frustrating stealth and shockingly high production values make this one of my favorite surprises of the year.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream
Played on
Steam (PC)
PROS
- Excellent use of UE5’s features
- Fun stealth-focused gameplay
- Intriguing narrative
- Proper pacing and length
CONS
- A few narrative beats that didn’t vibe with me
