They walk over their fallen comrades’ bodies, without noticing anything suspicious, and do other questionable things. The enemies, being robots and such, are not very smart. A whack to the head or two could take out a guard, but first you’ll have to outsmart him by analyzing his pattern and field of view. Being a thief, your character doesn’t have amazing fighting abilities.
Thankfully, I’ve come to the understanding that this was made deliberately, as the game is designed around these types of imperfections. The game gives you a lot of control in terms of traversing various obstacles, yet feels somewhat not as precise as you’d want.
Your character in The Swindle starts slow and sort of empty, so it’s up to you to try and level up as fast as possible. This is also true for all the acquired abilities. The money that you transferred to the bank will not be affected by this, so don’t worry about losing all those precious funds. Your new thief will be randomly-generated and assigned to continue the job of his fallen comrade.
If killed, your character and the money he acquired in this level will be lost forever. In case you’re detected, escaping becomes quite difficult due to the police rushing over to the place of your crime. Once you’re done with your thieving shenanigans for one heist, you have to get to the escape pod placed at the beginning of the level. Staying stealthy is the only sensible approach, so you’ll have to carefully sneak around the various enemies and traps. Your goal is to get into the building and steal as much stuff as you can, without being noticed.
Every level is procedurally-generated with random structure and enemy placements. The gameplay of The Swindle is based around the eternal conflict of being too greedy or knowing when to quit.