Shadow Gambit’s new characters are one of the best DLCs of 2023

Mimimi Games didn’t set out to make a trilogy of stealth strategy games. But when the studio closed its doors in December, after releasing its final DLC pack and content update for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crewa trilogy of stealth strategy games, is the predominant legacy it left behind.

“If I had had the chance to continue, I think we would have tried to change — to do something different,” Moritz Wagner, Mimimi’s creative director, told me in a video call. “Because I think this team is very good and we could have just as easily done something else, whatever it was.”

The German studio was on the edge of the abyss for most of its existence. In 2016, Mimimi released a mobile game and a “university project turned kid-friendly adventure” on CV Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Billed as a real-time tactics game, Shadow Tactics clearly took inspiration from Pyro Studios’ Commandos series, replacing its World War II setting with that of feudal Japan. Shadow Tactics was well received – the review was glowing – but it brought Mimimi “dangerously close to…”. bankruptcy.” Despite its ingenious isometric level design and clever squad-based stealth missions, it was still a niche project inspired by a niche series.

However, it was enough to get THQ Nordic’s attention. The publisher had acquired the rights to the Desperados series, Spellbound Entertainment’s early stealth games, and awarded Mimimi the contract Desperados 3. The series’ cachet and the studio’s talent combined to ensure another stellar reception (along with more players, judging by). Steam charts), which clears the way for Mimimi to work on a brand new IP: this year’s Shadow Gambita stealth strategy game about undead pirates with supernatural abilities, set in a Caribbean archipelago.

“I think when we did it Shadow Tactics“The goal was to create the old kind of Commandos atmosphere and of course create a new environment – ​​one that makes more sense,” Wagner said. “Desperados [3] Have we added more story and more detail in every aspect of the format? It was basically just “more and better.” But it was the same core idea. With Shadow GambitWe wanted to put a lot of emphasis on changing the structure: character choice, location choice. We wanted to push the idea that our games are multi-solution things.”

In contrast to the linear nature of Shadow Tactics And Desperados 3that take you through individual missions with preset characters, Shadow Gambit gives you the freedom to travel across the archipelago (aboard a sentient ghost ship, which no less gives you the ability to “reload memories” with the F5 key). You can also revive your undead crew members in any order. Aside from some missions that require the presence of the ship’s navigator and main protagonist Afia, you can also combine your squad to achieve different synergies on each excursion.

Shadow Gambit is by far the biggest leap in Mimimi’s design evolution to date. My colleague Alice Newcome-Beill called it a “surprising mix of smart mechanics and creative level design.” It reached number 18 on Polygon’s 50 Best Games of 2023. I consider it the studio’s magnum opus and one of the best games I’ve played in years.

Unfortunately, Mimimi announced shortly after publication that the closure would occur before the end of 2023. In a year full of studio closures and layoffs, the German studio is an outlier in that it made the decision itself. “Devoting the last decade and a half of our lives to working on increasingly demanding games has taken a heavy personal toll on us and our families,” he said August blog post read. “After the publication of Shadow Gambit We decided it was the right time to put our well-being first and put the brakes on rather than embark on another multi-year production cycle.”

For Wagner, the burnout confirmed a nagging suspicion: stealth games, no matter how good they may be, don’t have a large enough audience to be sustainable. Mimimi changed the Steam genre name “real-time tactics” to “stealth strategy”. Desperados 3 (to better describe Mimimi’s style of play, as described in another blog post), but the developer couldn’t escape the fact that he was making brilliant games in a niche genre.

“Everyone who has played our games loves them,” Wagner said. “People love it on Metacritic and Steam. But many people don’t even do it attempt It – even if there is a free demo. “It’s too stealthy, it’s too tactical, I can see cones of vision.” [in screenshots].’ Maybe the old-fashioned class of stealth games has spoiled it for some people: if you get discovered, you fail. Unfortunately, I wish that modern open-ended camouflage was still feasible, but I just don’t think that’s the case.”

It’s an absolute disgrace because Shadow GambitThe latest and only DLC packs show Mimimi at the peak of his powers. Zagan’s Ritual gives you a new island to explore, a new set of missions to pursue, and most importantly, the powerful new character. As a former member of the Inquisition – the most important enemy group in Shadow Gambit — Zagan uses the same abilities as some of the enemies I feared the most in my first playthrough. He can eliminate enemy guards without line of sight at the cost of his own health and also puts his enemies into a kind of stasis, sacrificing his own movement. It acts as a clever test for experienced people Shadow Gambit Player: I know how to defeat such enemies; How do I control it now?

Yuki’s Wish, on the other hand, is as pure and joyful as a victory lap as I can imagine for the former studio. Shadow Tactics Players will recognize the name of the returning character as well as that of their pet tanuki Kuma. The pair can lure enemies into deadly tripwires as they travel to Dragon’s Dream, an island based on an Edo-period Japanese aesthetic. Playing as Yuki (both she and Zagan integrate seamlessly into the base game at a certain point) I remember the first time I stumbled upon it Shadow Tacticsfell in love with it, told everyone I knew he should play it, and then waited restlessly for it Desperados 3 and consequently, Shadow Gambit – all because I tried something out of my wheelhouse.

“It’s like, Ahh! I want to get that recognition,” Wagner said. “I want people to see what we do and enjoy it. And it just doesn’t happen for a reason that is completely out of my control. It’s just the fact that it’s that type of game and there’s nothing we can do about it.

“We pushed the boundaries of our genre very hard. One of the biggest goals with Shadow Gambit was to expand the audience. But basically we worked in two niches. There’s a lot of positivity, a lot of hype among a smaller group – the people who have played our games – and that’s great to see. I’m grateful for that. But of course you want more.”

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed CrewIn my opinion, several things have come from this. It’s a bittersweet farewell to one of my favorite studios of all time. It’s as compelling a mix of level, character and mission design as I’ve seen since, well… Desperados 3. And it’s a stark reminder that genre labels do matter – both for what they promise and for what they may hide.