Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Preview (PC)

Despite having been released more than two decades ago, Commandos remains one of my favorite strategy games of all time. Or better say, the formula that Pyro Studios came up with is what made me fall in love with the game.

Mimimi Games is a German studio that specialized in the exact same formula, which is why I like their games as well. Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun and Desperados III are the studio’s latest games, and I strongly believe that they got the formula right.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is more of the same but with different actors. Set in an alternate history of the Golden Age of Piracy, Mimimi Games’ upcoming stealth-oriented real-time tactics title has players control a crew of dead pirates who are trying to oppose the menacing army of the Inquisition.

Your main goal is to find the mysterious treasure of the legendary Captain Mordechai, but in order to do that, you’ll have to first decipher the riddle left behind by the eccentric character before being offed by one of the Inquisition’s leaders.

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The game slowly introduces new characters to the player but lets you choose who to take with you on a mission. Each comes with their unique abilities, which can be upgraded, something that not many games of the same genre allow you to do.

However, before you can take any of the several characters available in the game with you on missions, you must revive them using Black Pearls, a very rare resource that can be obtained by raiding Inquisition’s outposts.

Although some of the characters fulfill the same role, their abilities are different to spice up gameplay. As Afia Manicato, a cursed pirate with powers that focus on melee and ranged kills, you have to find these black pearls and revive the crew of the Red Marley, a ghost ship with a living soul, which is also looking for Captain Mordecai’s treasure.

The first few missions are slowly introducing players to the game’s mechanics, which aren’t much different than what we got used to in Desperados III and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. You can still pause the game and plan different actions with multiple characters and then have them execute them at the same time.

The save scumming system has been generously hidden behind a mechanic that allows you to “capture a memory,” so if you’re not content with the results of you action at any given time during a mission, you can just return to the moment when you captured the memory.

I found the few characters that I’ve been able to revive in the preview build pretty interesting and their unique supernatural powers very fun to use. I chuckled every time I found a clever way to combine my characters’ support, damage dealing and crowd control abilities.

The combat mechanics are very solid allowing for some very interesting puzzle solutions. Every mission in the game feels like a puzzle with multiple solutions. Depending on which characters you decided to take with you on a mission, you might have an easier time solving that puzzle.

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Conclusion