Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew review – the golden age of pirate strategy

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew – the final strategy (Picture: Mimimi Games)

GameCentral takes a look at the final release from Mimimi Games and what is in danger of being the last ever stealth strategy game.

We usually enjoy going back through the year’s releases, looking for quality titles we failed to review the first time around. We’d never even heard of Pizza Tower until recently, but we were aware of Shadow Gambit when it came out in August – when we had no time to review it. We’ve rectified that now, but it’s been a bittersweet process, since in the meantime German developer Mimimi Games has shut their doors.

They did so just days after the game’s launch, so were clearly under no delusion as to how well it would sell, but it’s sad to see their explanation is simply that the cost of making games has become too high and they’re no longer making enough money from them to survive.

Mimimi did go in for a very specific niche though, of games inspired by late 90s real-time strategy series Commandos. Even that was never that big, but Mimimi managed to keep the unusual, stealth-orientated concept going, changing the setting each time from samurai era Japan in Shadow Tactics to an official sequel to cowboy game Desperados, and, finally, the supernatural pirate adventure of Shadow Gambit.

Apart from Desperados and Mimimi, the Commandos series never had many other fans, but it’s endured nonetheless, with Mimimi describing the sub-genre as stealth strategy. Technically the games are real-time strategies, but they play more like a cross between a puzzle and a stealth game, where you control a small team of characters who all have very different weapons and abilities.

The plot and tone of Shadow Gambit is very obviously influenced by the Pirates Of The Caribbean films, in terms of having a heavy supernatural element and a good sense of humour. The specifics involve a sentient ghost ship whose previous crew you help to reanimate through the course of the story. You don’t get them all at once but there are eight different playable characters in total, each with their own distinctive personalities, undead powers, and optional side quests.

Unlike most other stealth strategies, you can only take three pirates with you into each mission, which means you’re even more outnumbered than usual. Although rather than raising the difficulty it’s more to ensure the game isn’t too overwhelming for new players. Most of the time you’re dealing with an order of pyrotechnic inquisitors who find it distressingly easy to deal with ghost pirates – hence the need for stealth.

Vision cones are not something you see much in modern video games but here, as in all stealth strategy games, they’re vitally important. Watching the patrol routes of guards and learning their patterns, while figuring out ways to sneak past their field of vision – often based on only split-second opportunities – is at the heart of Shadow Gambit and all similar games.

The other half of the equation is the abilities of the pirates, with many having the option to distract enemies in some way but everyone having their own more unique skills, from Teresa the sniper to melee expert Toya. Each often has unique movement skills too, from some that are good at swimming or another that’s an expert climber.

Since they are ghosts, many of their abilities are fantastical, such as being able to instantly grow a bush (useful for cover and hiding dead bodies), possessing enemies for a short time, or teleporting. Each character also has a large skill tree to unlock, to add new or more powerful abilities of your choice.

To help further there’s a shadow mode option where you can stack up orders while paused and then have them execute straight afterwards, which is especially useful for synchronising actions between different characters.

We initially worried that the three-person limit would mean a lot of restarting missions when you realise you’ve picked the wrong skillsets. But while there are certainly optimum selections you can beat any mission with any combination of characters (assuming at least one has a distraction ability, which the game will warn you about before you start). In fact, making do with what you’ve got, in terms of abilities, is one of the great joys of the game, since you know there’s always a way through, if only you can work it out.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew – vision cones come as standard (Picture: Mimimi Games)

However, that devil may care attitude does not carry through to the use of save-scumming – the very PC-centric concept of constantly saving the game after every successful action. Mimimi have recognised that everyone’s going to do it anyway – since being spotted by just a single guard can ruin an entire mission – so they lean into it in terms of both the gameplay and the story. The ship actively reminds you if you haven’t saved recently, discourages you from loading one that’s too old, and has a whole button dedicated to storing a ‘memory’.

Considering how good Shadow Gambit is, it’s sad to know Mimimi are no more, but at the same time it’s hard to see where they could have gone from here. Fundamentally, this is still the same game as their previous two titles and while this is the most accomplished and accessible it’s only really the pirate setting the makes it feel unique.

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The mission design, in particular, can start to feel very familiar, even if you’ve never played one of the other games before, with the clockwork AI never seeming to react dynamically or unpredictably. That’s at least partially by design, and one of the reasons we describe it as part puzzle game, but there’s definitely an old-fashionedness to the design that is something of an acquired taste.

That’s not so much a complaint as an observation though and we’d much rather have the same basic game again, in a different setting, than deal with the knowledge that this is the last we’ll ever see from Mimimi and perhaps the whole sub-genre. Commandos is supposed to be getting a reboot next year, from a different developer, but we have a hard time imagining it’ll be better than Shadow Gambit.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £32.99
Publisher: Mimimi Games
Developer: Mimimi Games
Release Date: 17th August 2023
Age Rating: 16

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GameCentral takes a look at the final release from Mimimi Games and what is in danger of being the last ever stealth strategy game.