Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Review

As a fan of Eidos’ Commandos series way back when, my elation upon discovering Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III a few years ago was immeasurable. With those titles, Munich-based Mimimi Games single-handedly resurrected a long-dormant style of stealth game and masterfully remoulded it into something modern, something memorable, and something altogether magical. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is no different. 

In Shadow Gambit, you’ll move your crew of crackpot pirates through a series of missions set in the Caribbean Sea, pointing and clicking your way from bush to building to the great “Below”, all in an effort to complete your objectives without being seen. Whether you decide to knock a guard out or go straight for the jugular, all that’s important is an untriggered alarm and a safe escape. As sociopathic as some of your spectral crew appear to be, however, all this savagery and sneaking around is not just in the name of sport; you and your ghostly gang are fighting to claim victory over the villainous “Inquisition” in a violent race to claim your dead captain’s mysterious treasure. 

As you begin each mission, you can survey your destination, select from a handful of landing spots, and throw together your three-man hit squad before setting sail. You’ll move through levels by scrutinising enemy view-cones and plotting how to sneak past or silently take them out, all while taking advantage of each character’s unique abilities and the environment around you. You’ll control your crew in real-time, but you can also pause and plan out simultaneous actions for each pirate before resuming and watching it all play out. This system — termed “Shadow Time” — is a staple of Mimimi’s stealth strategy games and allows for some intensely satisfying mastermind moments that will earn you no shortage of self-pats on the back.

Whilst the core gameplay is addictive by itself, Shadow Gambit offers a number of compelling peripheral systems to differentiate itself from its predecessors and elevate your experience. In this new adventure, playable characters can be unlocked in any order and, with few exceptions, grouped together in any combination of three. Crewmates you leave behind accrue “Vigor” that will be banked the next time you use them and can then be used to purchase empowered abilities for each character. It’s easy to fall back on those same three favourite freebooters, so this motive to mix up my team for additional rewards was more than appreciated. Additionally, as you welcome each pirate into the party, you’ll take part in cleverly made tutorial levels to help get you acquainted, and there’s plenty more where that came from if you want to indulge their egos some more. Optional “Crew Tales” and “Captain’s Trials” — expanded story segments and special character-focused missions, respectively — are perfectly catered for each personality and will add hours of fun onto your adventure, as will the many unlockable “badges” you can earn for meeting specific criteria in every mission. 

Mimimi Games has certainly made its masterfully crafted stealth strategy systems meatier with their latest outing, and Shadow Gambit’s sandbox systems make for a bold response to fan criticisms of Desperados III. “The characters are too similar to Shadow Tactics”, some said. “They’ve simply made the same game again”. Although these are not words you’d hear me utter myself, I can appreciate how the studio has challenged itself to mix things up this time around. Whilst many mechanics remain the same — or at least similar — greater freedom of approach and an array of over-the-top abilities breathe new life into the game and act as a purposeful evolution of the genre, though not without a cost. Since this new style of play means that the game must accommodate for mission completion by any kind of party, levels often feel less tightly curated and somewhat easier than fans might be used to. There are myriad ways to increase the challenge, of course, from badge-hunting to notching up the difficulty level, but it’s not quite the same; I simply found those mastermind moments as I pulled off the perfect strategy to be further apart than they’ve ever been before. It’s a necessary trade-off for this new design philosophy, and no doubt players will respond to it in different ways, but one fact remains intact in spite of it: Shadow Gambit is still as fun as its predecessors ever were.

What of the story, then? No sea-faring, swash-buckling adventure is ever complete without zany tales of a treasure hunt, of course, and Mimimi Games provide that here in heaps. Whilst the narrative is going to be far from the first reason that people pick Shadow Gambit up, its well-paced plot beats, quirky cast of characters, and top-tier thematics do a great job of holding the whole experience aloft across its 30-or-so-hour average runtime. Whether it’s narcissistic quartermaster Pinkus von Presswald narrating his own life in the third person or skeletal shipwright John Mercury having one-sided conversations with his seemingly dead pet fish, the game has oodles of charm as well as moments of surprising sincerity as you get to know your crew more closely. The game’s primary plotline will keep you ticking throughout, but its character tales are where Shadow Gambit’s storytelling truly shines. 

Whether or not Shadow Gambit is a better game than Shadow Tactics or Desperados 3 will be a purely subjective conclusion. Mimimi Games has all but mastered its proprietary brand of strategy, and the core gameplay present in this latest iteration is just as almost-perfect as ever before but with a whole host of intrepid new ideas ensuring that the stealthy spark never goes out. With the third title in this hat-trick of high-quality releases, Mimimi proves that it can plunge its hands to the bottom of the sea and consistently bring home solid gold, and I cannot wait to see what they haul up next.