Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Review
What do you get with a talking ghost ship staffed by a quirky found family of zombies and run by a literal skeleton crew? That sounds like a setup for a Guybrush Threepwood zinger, but it’s actually the good guys in Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. This outstanding stealth tactics game has you managing teams of magic-infused undead pirates on their mission to find a lost treasure, serve justice, fulfill their last regrets, and outwit the skeletal monkey that terrorizes their ship. The developers at Mimimi have delivered a sense of humor that drives the plot, wonderful visual and level design, and a cast of ne'er-do-wells diverse in both abilities and function. All of that means Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew sets sail as perhaps the finest stealth tactics game ever made, charting a course for the genre's future that's brighter than ever.
Controlling a team of three pirates in real time, your job is to fulfill a few stealthy mission objectives on island maps thick with enemies, civilians, and set piece features. Every one of the eight different islands is an example of the diorama-type design that Mimimi has become known for from Desperados 3 and its Shadow Tactics games. Each of them is a moving tapestry of not just pretty scenery, but stealth puzzles for you to solve and ingenious knots of patrol routes and stationary guards to tactically unravel. It's also by far the most accessible game I've ever played in this genre, with varied mission times allowing shorter play sessions and a lot of easily tweaked difficulty settings broken down by category.
On a basic level, Shadow Gambit follows in the footsteps of the Commandos games: you maneuver your hand-picked crew around in real-time strategy style, using their powers to
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