Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew review: "A fiendishly fun stealth strategy game"

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is at its best when you make the riskiest decisions. Whether that's blasting a corpse out of a cannon to knock out an unsuspecting foe, blinking across the map to attack from above, or having your sniper take out a particularly pesky watchman that's a little too good at his job. It's hard not to have a blast with the Red Marley's undead mateys when it's a matter of high risk and even higher reward.

Half of the stealth-sandbox missions in Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew are spent hunting down Black Pearls, while others send you in search of Soul Energy-infused Relics. I'm sure there are plot reasons for this, but frankly, I don't care. I'm spurred on by the fact that both materials are needed to resurrect more crew members, adding to my ranks of living dead skeleton assassins. The real-time tactical combat flows seamlessly as you scuttle from cover to cover through lush, detailed maps, but Shadow Gambit's standout feature is the crew itself – so much so that it's easy to lose sight of the wider shape of the story.

Walking the plank

She might be a ghost ship, but The Red Marley is as much a main character as the undead souls housed on board. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew starts simple enough: after rescuing the vessel from the clutches of religious crusaders known as Inquisitors, main protagonist Afia Manicato pledges to join her ranks, raise hell on earth (literally), and defeat Head Inquisitor Ignacia with the help of the cursed crew of the Marley. 

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From there, I have my choice of which crewmates to resurrect and pull into the battle. I opt for ship doctor Suleidy first, drawn to her character model of a vine-wrapped partial skeleton with the ability to grow emergency shrubbery using cover seeds. It seems a good balancing act when paired with Afia's more attack-heavy abilities like Blink and Time Freeze. Discovering these kinds of powerful pairings is key to Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew's action, and being a real-time stealth strategy game, I know the crewmates I choose can make or break a mission.

During missions, you control crewmates individually or move them as a group. The party size is capped at three maximum per outing, and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew does well at encouraging you to test each new recruit. Still, there are some that you'll quickly leave behind. Gaëlle the Cannoness didn't make the cut for me, for example, as more often than not I found her skills of shooting dead bodies at enemies or launching other crew members into far-flung areas a bit too situational to be of reliable use. 

This is an issue all throughout Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. As a stealth strategy experience, there is a constant push to keep experimenting with new crewmates and their unique skills, each giving a certain tactical edge to help breach enemy lines and retrieve your treasure. But it's undeniable that some abilities are weighted better than others, and taking a gamble on more elaborate schemes can often lead to frustration. It's because of this that I often find myself drawn to the same three usual suspects, although that does mean I sometimes end up getting the cards thrown back into my face at crucial moments.

It was an Uno-reverse plot twist from developer Mimimi Games that left me feeling punished for playing my way. Developing a favored playstyle and sticking to it is a tried-and-tested method for me, especially in any of the best strategy games. In the case of Shadow Gambit, however, having a steadfast group of core crewmates meant I was in for a nasty surprise during my showdown with Ignacia. Luckily, trial and error are fiercely encouraged. The save function itself is woven cleverly through the story, so I happily hit that Capture Memory button every three to five minutes. The good news is that Shadow Gambit really wants you to explore the possibilities of each character, but if it's pure stealth subterfuge you're after, I hope you have more patience than I do.

Plotting your approach in Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a whole thing in itself. The isometric camera allows you to see maps from above, with the option to check the vision cones of each enemy no matter where they are. It's helpful to see which direction they're looking in as they go about their patrols, but you can only check one vision cone at a time. This means learning how to avoid detection, or how to use crew abilities to distract and isolate enemies, takes lots of practice. 

Various missions share maps with others, but with enemy positions changed up slightly across the board, you never know what you'll be in for until you make port. This makes it even harder to experiment with crew selection, and keeps leading me back to my core strategy: one crewmate to help with hiding and distraction, and the other two sent in as killing machines. Even after developing a flexible approach that can be applied to most situations, though, something about the recycled environs eventually feels stale. There's only so many times I can tread the same boards before the islands get overly familiar, some being given plenty of facetime while others are abandoned far too soon.

It's the pirate's strife for me

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew features a non-linear narrative structure, giving you some scope of freedom to experiment with characters and get a feel for the maps. While it's certainly fun being able to choose from an assortment of available missions, main quest objectives can pop up at inopportune times, forcing me to embark on multiple missions on the same island in a row. While I enjoy finding new ways around familiar problems, I prefer the more exploratory, loosely-hewn structure of the early-game missions. 

An example of this takes place on the Twins of Nerechtemeresh, a pair of conjoined islands haunted by the ghosts of two children. If you want their Black Pearl, you need to join them in playing tricks on patrolling Inquisitors – namely, setting fire to their grog. I love working within more playful parameters whenever Shadow Gambit let me, with the atmospheric storytelling of certain missions being a huge contrast from the capture-the-flag shape of most others. Less time is given to compact experiences as the game progresses, dramatically raising the stakes out of nowhere once you unlock five of the six potential crewmates. This shift doesn't feel like a clever narrative twist, it feels like whiplash.

The development of the main plot comes at the expense of the game's supporting elements, most noticeably its characters. Mimimi Games has created such an intriguing cast that, rather than engaging with the core story, I found myself longing to hang out with my Cursed Crew instead. Investigating a strange parasitic illness with Suleidy was more entertaining than sitting captive to Ignacia's dastardly plotting, so much so that the murky plot felt inherently unnecessary compared to sheer fun of unlocking characters and experimenting with their powers. Side quest-like Crew Tales offer a nice narrative-driven change of pace while outside of the strategic sandbox missions, but since you can only take one at a time before you need to head out to sea, I felt almost resentful of the storyline for getting in the way. 

As night settles aboard the Red Marley and I sit down at the navigator's desk, it's time to chart another mission. As much as I love the distinct characters involved and could get swept away by their charm, this is a blistering real-time tactics yarn that requires a grueling amount of brain juice to pull off properly. Strategizing your way around the same handful of maps might get samey after the first 10 hours, and the plot often comes second fiddle to its brilliant cast of characters, but Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a gem of a game with a mischievous glint not to be ignored.