Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is the magnum opus of an overlooked team

Like the Golden Age of Piracy the closure of independent developer Mimimi Games came to a sudden and glorious end. The studio’s final release, The Cursed Crew: Shadow Gambit, serves as a capstone of the studio’s constant innovation in the stealth tactics genre. Building on its previous titles Desperados 3You can also find out more about the following: Blades of the Shogun: Shadow TacticsMimimi’s stealth formula has been refined to create a novel, accessible and creative experience within a genre that is notoriously difficult. It’s a shame to see Mimimi close its doors after a 15-year run, even for healthy reasons, but Shadow Gambit is one hell of a send-off.

What is the best way to get there? Desperados 3You can also find out more about the following: Shadow TacticsThe Wild West, and Edo-era Japan. The Cursed Crew plants itself in a rendition of the Caribbean that I can only describe as “Monkey Island-esque,” complete with talking skulls and undead pirates.

You can also find out more about the following: Shadow Gambit’s isometric perspective, you’ll spend the majority of your time analyzing enemy patrol routes and systematically eliminating guards while attempting to remain undetected. As you’re introduced to more resilient enemies, you might have to switch up your approach, but ultimately, each objective in Shadow Gambit This is a challenging puzzle to solve. You need patience, timing, and observation.

Mimimi provides two useful tools for this purpose. The first is a remarkably forgiving quick-save system that the game’s narrator periodically reminds you to use. Quick-saving isn’t a revolutionary feature in and of itself, but loading a previous save in Shadow Gambit happens so fast that it’s practically seamless, drastically reducing the penalties for failure. What’s more, Mimimi has built “save scumming” into the game’s very narrative — it’s framed as the superpower of the Red Marley, the sentient pirate ship you return to between missions.

Shadow GambitThis game also brings back another Mimimi classic, the planning system. It allows you to stop the game, queue up the actions of each character, and then execute them all at once. The planning system allows for quick maneuvers and looks rad.

A screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew showing the planning system with actions spread across multiple guards.

To accomplish each mission, you recruit and deploy a rogues’ gallery of distinct characters, all of whom have different abilities that allow you to eliminate, distract, or reposition guards. After a certain point, you can recruit the pirates in any order (read: necromance them using collectible Black Pearls scattered around the game’s archipelago). Afia’s Dishonored style powers allow for a good combination of lethality with maneuverability. Teresa the peg-legged blind sniper and Toya the teleporting killer are my favorite recruits. Aside from a select few missions that prohibit certain characters from deploying, you can roll with any three-pirate crew you want; amazingly, I never selected a team comp that wouldn’t let me accomplish every objective with style and panache.

A Gif demonstrating the squad selection screen for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Beyond their stealth capabilities and quirky talents (the cannoness Gaëlle le Bris can launch enemies into the ocean, while the quartermaster Pinkus von Presswald can possess enemies, to name a couple), each member of your crew gets a bespoke side storyline. Suleidy the plant-woman and ship doctor is tasked with diagnosing an unusual illness afflicting a skeletal crew. Your home base, Red Marley itself, has its own personality.

A screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew showing an overview of the Red Marley, your base of operations. — Red Marley will be your headquarters and base of operation.

You’ll revisit the same eight islands several times over the course of your adventures, which lets you gain a certain familiarity with the topography and features. While you can technically navigate an entire island in any given mission, you’ll likely only experience a small slice of it en route to your current objective. Each island feels like a testament to Mimimi’s dioramic level design, which not only accounts for different objectives with different insertion points for your crew, but also for different traversal options based on your particular squad.

A screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed crew, showing an overview of the Dreadvine Cove Island, highlighting the vine covered skull that sits at the center of the map.

Shadow Gambit’s take on the stealth tactics genre is an unlikely mixture that elicits equal parts novelty and thrills — in a game that’s largely about shanking dudes in the back. Case and point, I will happily shiv a guard, then promptly load him into Gaëlle’s cannon, before using his corpse as ammunition against his buddies. It’s a total subversion of what you’d expect from this otherwise serious genre, and I love it.

The Cursed Crew: Shadow GambitThis is an obvious labor of love by a studio, which, just like the crew of Red Marley’s, has been able to revive a genre and maintain it with humor and cleverness. It’s a surprising blend of intelligent mechanics and creative level design, standing as a monument to Mimimi Games’ contributions to the medium.