Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a tactics game by the minds behind Shadow Tactics and Desperados.
I recently had the chance to play the demo during the Steam Next Fest event. I’ve always been aware of these kinds of games but haven’t really dabbled in the genre much. So this was my first time playing a tactics game such as this and hot damn, was I hooked from the very start. While Shadow Tactics was about Samurai and Desperados about Cowboys, Shadow Gambit is about Pirates but not just any pirates, oh-no. These are cursed pirates with special powers and abilities and a ship that can rewind time. Yes, the ship can speak as well. My collector tendencies were tickled at the idea of unlocking different characters and testing them out. Each one plays differently. Take the main lady herself, Afia, who can dash to enemies and take them down with her dagger as well as stop time briefly. Then there is Toya the one armed skeleton pirate samurai (my favourite) who can lure enemies to him. Dash to a little totem that he can throw around and if an enemy is in range of it he will slice them up with an animation that never gets old. He can also swim, which is weird give he has no flesh and one arm. The game is all about stealth and different characters give you different methods on how to go about doing things.
The demo was meaty, but it really was just a hook. And you can consider me hooked indeed.
It is by no means an easy game, but it allows you to play around and experiment with different tactics due to its quick save and load feature. It is pretty much a tactical sandbox with a fantasy pirate theme on top of it.
Shadow Gambit is releasing August 17th of this year.
