Avast! Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Is Here

Ahoy, me hearties. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew has come to port, and it be bursting with pirate booty! 

Ok, I’ll talk like a regular human from now on. Maybe. Ok, we know I am going to slip back into the pirate speak occasionally. It can’t be helped. Unhinged rambling aside, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is here on our gaming PCs. Mixing nautical pirate fun with real-time strategy gameplay, this game offers a blend of tactical thinking, exciting combat, and sandbox exploration on beautiful, tropical islands. So, it’s time to stock up on rum and hit the high seas – it’s a pirate’s life for us! Yarrrrr. 

What Did We Play On?

Shadow Gambit: The Cirsed Crew was played on a gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. 

I have also reviewed: 

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Gameplay 

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew has been developed and published by Mimimi Games, who has a tasty collection of RTS games under their belt. With this expertise at hand, Shadow Gambit takes the tactical RPG and real-time strategy mechanics and puts them in a rich, Caribbean setting with plenty of supernatural intrigue. 

You play as the cursed pirate, Afia, who is on a quest to find the mysterious treasure of legendary Captain Mordechai, the Black Pearls. These will revive a cursed crew of your own to command. Sailing aboard a ghost ship with a living soul, the Red Marley, you must explore the islands of the Lost Caribbean, which are under the control of the Inquisition. This terrible force despises all things supernatural and will stop at nothing to hunt down cursed pirates like yourself. 

A Ship Needs A Crew

To help you find the treasure, you can add eight shipmates to your crew, from the original Red Marley crew no less. Each is a playable character, with their own unique supernatural powers and personality. Master Mr Mercury’s magical ability to open portals, launch people from Gaëlle’s cannon, and even dash across spacetime with Afia’s own magic sword. All these abilities can be used in combat to create an advantage and dominate in the various battles that lie in your path. 

Aboard the Red Marley, you and your crew can plan your next adventure, progressing the main story or even taking on character missions to learn about your shipmates’ backstories. You can select which crew member to play as before each mission, with their unique abilities helping you to traverse the hand-crafted, sandbox islands and find their hidden secrets. 

What’s more, the Red Marley has the ability to manipulate time, a tool you are free to use to your advantage. Pause time, capture memories that you can return to, and use it to queue up multiple character actions. Time is yours to control! 

What Did We Think?

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is my first foray into real time strategy games. It goes against my barbarian fighting tactics, but in a good way. Learning both the genre and game mechanics really forced me to think about strategic manoeuvres and where to best place each character. Because the “run in and hit” tactic does not work here. Which is honestly more an of an indictment on the way I play than anything else! 

Steep learning curve aside, this is a beautiful game that does an excellent job of immersing you into the Caribbean setting. Each island is richly detailed with more than one route to traverse, which gives you great flexibility for executing your missions. The life-saving mechanic, for me, is the “capture memories” tool. Throughout your mission, you can hit F5 to create a memory. Should you spectacularly fail your mission and all crew members die, you can return to said captured memory and try again. From there, you can do what I did and blunder head-first into the same failed tactic a few more times or take advantage of various alternate routes and try something new. 

So far, my favourite character is Suleidy, the ship’s doctor. She is part plant, and I found her ability to grow bushes for hiding infinitely useful. Paired with Afia’s sword dash attack and I was nearly stealthy! 

Whether you’re a newcomer to stealth RTS games or a seasoned veteran, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew offers a great blend of strategic gameplay and supernatural whimsy. Afia keeps her sword holstered in her chest, that is whimsy! (And pretty dang cool, too.) I am certainly looking forward to getting more missions under my belt and completing the Red Marley crew.  

Two New DLCs

Available from December 6^th, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew has two DLCs, Yuki’s Wish and Zagan’s Ritual. They come with the promise of a new character, mystical island, and story campaign to complete. Both of these DLCs will seamlessly integrate with the existing game, allowing you to unleash the new character’s supernatural abilities on almost any of the main missions. See how their skills enhance and change your tactics! 

This also comes with the sad news that Mimimi Games won’t be producing any more games after Shadow Gambit. You can breathe a little easier, knowing they plan to continue to support this great game, though. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for this talented crew. 

What Platforms Can I Play Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew On? 

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available to play on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, on both Steam and Epic Games. 

This is a single player adventure, so there is no integrated support for crossplay. If you did want to share your nautical antics, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew would be great for live streaming! 

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew Official Specifications 

What does it take to crew the Red Marley? Here are the official specifications for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. 

Best PCs to Play Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

All in all, the spec requirements for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew aren’t too demanding. Opting for an SSD to run your games is an ideal strategy to employ for all your gaming, in truth. The fast read and write speeds drastically reduce boot times, so you’re free to jump into the action and not sat waiting on loading screens. If you’d like to learn more about how to best arrange your storage, do check out our guide! 

For now, we have picked out a selection of gaming PCs and laptops that we think would be best to play Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. Each features a CPU with at least six cores, high-performance GPUs, and that all-important SSD for storage. Should none of these look like the pirate booty of your dreams, we have an extensive range of gaming PCs and laptops just waiting to be plundered.  

Refract Gaming Jade Pre-Built PC 

Set sail with the Refract Gaming Jade at the helm. This pre-built PC has been crafted by our team of experts to facilitate smooth 1080p and 1440p gaming. The Jade is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU, boasting eight cores, sixteen threads, and boost speeds up to 5.3GHz. Paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GPU, this gaming PC will bring Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew to life like the Black Pearls revive cursed pirates. Plus, with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD, you can keep your strategies running in real-time with near zero input lag.   

The Jade is part of our Refract Gaming range, which is fully pre-built and pre-tested. These PCs also come with a three year parts and labour warranty, to give you that extra peace of mind. Sadly, damage from the Inquisition is not covered! 

MSI Cyborg 15 Gaming Laptop 

With the MSI Cyborg 15, you could play Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew from the high seas themselves! (Though that’s just asking for sea sickness and water damage, if you ask me!) This gaming laptop utilises an Intel Core i7-12750H CPU, that features a balance of P- and E-cores. These are intelligently managed by Intel Thread Director, assigning the best core for the various workloads. With the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 and Ada Lovelace architecture, the MSI Cyborg 15 harnesses the power of all the latest gaming innovations to expertly render all your favourite games in stunning quality. 

What’s more, this gaming laptop pairs DDR5 RAM and NVMe PCIe storage for the ultimate in lightning-fast fetch rates, read and write speeds, and that all-important near-zero latency. Plus, utilising Cooler Boost technology, this gaming laptop will stay at optimum temperatures – without having to hang it from the rigging to keep cool! 

OcUK Gaming Khopesh Configurable PC 

Our last crew suggestion is the OcUK Gaming Khopesh. This gaming PC is equipped with the latest gaming tech from both AMD and NVIDIA, so it is more than ready to take down the Inquisition. For its CPU, the Khopesh utilises an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X with eight cores, sixteen threads, and Zen 4 architecture for optimised performance. In the graphics department, this gaming PC has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super with 16GB of dedicated GDDR6X memory. Enjoy buttery smooth frame rates as you manipulate time to dominate in combat! 

The OcUK Gaming Khopesh is one of our configurable gaming PCs, meaning you can adjust the base spec to best suit your needs. As standard, it includes an NVMe PCIe SSD for the primary storage drive, but you can choose to add another NVMe and an extra 2.5″ drive, as well as adjust the capacity. Plenty of SSDs to keep Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew happy! You can also make adjustments to the PC case, CPU, CPU cooler, memory, braided cables, and operating system. Please note that any changes will have an affect on the price.  

More Gaming High Seas to Explore

Set sail for more nautical adventures! We have plenty of games to discover on the Overclockers UK Blog.

Shiver Me Timbers!

Have you picked up Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew? Let us know in the comments below what you think of this nautical treasure. 

PC specs are subject to change.