Let us speak of the ; if death is inevitable in Shadow Gambit, then so too is the tremulous peal of the Red Marley’s phantom bell. With the press of a button, it chimes across the ethereal plane, solidifying a moment into a memory, and with another button, the past becomes present as the memory is restored: in an instance, lessons are learned, mistakes are undone, the slate is wiped clean to try, try again.
Shadow Tactics: The Cursed Crew reviewDeveloper: MimimiPublisher: MimimiPlatform: Played on PC (and Steam Deck)Availability: Out 17th August on PC (Steam, Epic Games, GOG), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
It’s a temporal dance that’ll be immediately familiar to those who’ve played developer Mimimi’s previous games. With the likes of Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3, the studio has carved a wonderfully specific niche for itself over the years, creating top-down squad-based stealth-tactics games very much inspired by genre classics like Commandos and Desperados – where margin for error is minimal and save scumming is elevated to high art. That one-two of quick-save and quick-load – here represented by the Red Marley’s thunderous – might be familiar, but in Shadow Gambit it also feels different somehow. Its is so profoundly, theatrically woven into the fabric of its story, so brazenly part of its identity – crashing in amid swirling green mists at one end, smashing violently out of shattering glass at the other – it becomes a mechanic proudly, confidently made motif, and goodness, is Shadow Gambit assured.
That starts with the setting; while Mimimi’s earlier games played it relatively straight in terms of historical realism, Shadow Gambit presents a wonderfully realised alternative vision of the golden age of piracy, where cursed undead crews roam the seas battling an order of religious fanatics known as the Inquisition. At the centre of it all is Afia Manicat, an ambitious undead pirate with a plan in her head, a conveniently accessible cutlass through her heart, and, after a confidently swashbuckling opening, an invitation to join the crew of the Red Marley, a sentient ship currently on the hunt for its former captain’s legendary treasure.
It’s gloriously characterful stuff, a full-blooded high seas adventure full of magic, camaraderie, and danger. Grog is glugged, buckles are swashed, and timbers are shivered, but Mimimi infuses proceedings with its own darkly fantastical vision. This is a world of sentient jungles, islands perpetually frozen at the point of destruction, ethereal dimensions of shattered memories and, during character-specific interludes that play out between missions on the Red Marley, murder plots, and even fish looking to be tutored in the ways of the shinobi.