Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse has announced that it has acquired the publishing rights for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew across all platforms. Going forward, the game will be published, distributed, and handled in general by Hooded Horse.

“We are honored and humbled that Mimimi chose us to be a part of Shadow Gambit’s journey,” says Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender. “This game is the pinnacle of stealth strategy games, and we’re looking forward to helping it maintain the long-term success it deserves.”

“Shadow Gambit is in its final form, and we’re excited to be partnering with Hooded Horse for its ongoing commercial needs,” says Mimimi Co-Founder Johannes Roth. “We’re very impressed by their approach to indie publishing and are confident they will help the game reach even more players.”

In our review of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is an excellent game. With its wonderfully realized fantasy pirate setting, it instantly pulls you into its world, and with a combination of tight and perfectly implemented mechanics, excellently designed stealth sandboxes, and a colourful cast of characters that’s an absolute blast to play as, it delivers a consistently fun and inventive adventure where the stealth, tactics, and experimentation never lose any of their charm, right up until the credits roll.” Read the full review through here.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The studio states that it has been getting requests for modding capabilities in its games since Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun was released. The studio tried experimenting with the idea in Desperados 3 with its Level Editing Cheats. With the studio essentially closing down, however, full modding tools for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is its final attempt at the idea.

Mimimi Games had announced that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew would be its final game back in August. Creative director Dominik Abé and founder and CEO Johannes Roth said that the decision was made because of the heavy personal toll working on increasingly ambitious games took on the studio.

As part of its final flurry of content, the studio released two DLCs for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew—Yuki’s Wish and Zagan’s Ritual. Both DLCs bring with them new characters that can be recruited to the player’s crew, as well as new story missions and levels.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details about the tactical stealth game.

Each DLC brings with it a new character that players can recruit into their crew, as well as a host of other content, including new story missions and new levels to explore. While Zagan’s Ritual features a new character—Zagan the Apostate—Yuki’s Wish brings back Yuki the Twilight Corsair from the studio’s previous game, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun.

On recruiting the new characters, players can bring them into other missions part of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew‘s main campaign. Each character has its own unique abilities. For example, Zagan the Apostate can make use of dark powers, tapping into the Undead Curse as well as Maiden’s Fire.

Along with the DLCs, the studio has also released a free update for the game, dubbed Treasure Hunts. The update brings with it new quests in the hunt for pirate treasures and artifacts, and is focused largely around the end game. The quests in the update offer a free-roam experience, allowing players to explore islands without the stress of having to deal with specific story missions. Each island in the Treasure Hunts update will have its own twist on the gameplay.

Future plans for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew after the release of these two DLCs are in flux, as the studio has announced that it will be shutting down and that Shadow Gambit will be its final game. The studio stated that working on games has had a “heavy personal toll” on the team. These two DLCs will be the final release from the studio before its closure.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.

Each expansion offers a new playable character with unique abilities, a new uncharted island and a story campaign with six new missions. The content will seamlessly integrate into the base game, allowing you to use the new characters for almost every mission. Of course, the developer hasn’t revealed their identities or what they can do, so expect more details in the coming weeks.

As for Mimimi Games shutting down, it’s due to the “heavy personal toll” that working on games has had. The launch of Shadow Gambit has allowed for bonuses to its employees, and the developer is “doing everything in our power to support our team.”

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. Check out our review here. It’s discounted by 20 percent on Steam until November 28th.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Set against the backdrop of Prague, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided presents a dense network of systems and gives players ample tools to bend those systems to their will. Missions take place in open-ended sandboxes with multiple paths to your objective, and depending on your character build – you can choose to sweet talk your way through guards, hack into security systems for a convenient backdoor entry, or just blow everything in your path with sheer brute force. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is arguably the series at its best both visually and mechanically, and it remains a joyous experience even after all these years.

On its official site, creative director Dominik Abé and CEO Johannes Roth (who also founded the company) revealed that “Dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families. After the release of Shadow Gambit, we decided it was the right time to prioritize our well-being and to pull the brakes instead of signing up for another multi-year production cycle.”

Shadow Gambit will continue to receive support with a new patch in the works for all platforms. There’s also a big content drop coming later this year. Despite the sudden announcement, the development team was informed before the same. Abé and Roth are currently “doing everything in our power to support our team,” including reaching out to industry friends for new jobs.

Thankfully, Shadow Gambit’s launch allowed for bonuses to all employees during this transition. Abé and Roth thanked its developers, community, peers and publishers like THQ Nordic, Daedalic Entertainment and Kowloon Nights.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. Check out our review here.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is out today on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Set in a fantasy pirate setting, Shadow Gambit puts players in control of a crew of pirates with unique magical abilities as they head off on a treasure hunt in a race against the forces of the Inquisition.

The gameplay centers around real-time tactics and emphasizes stealth above all else, putting players in vast stealth sandboxes and encouraging experimentation and creativity in how you use your surroundings to your advantage and what you do with your crew’s unique set of abilities. Check out its launch trailer below for a taste of what it has in store.

In our review of the game, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is an excellent game. With its wonderfully realized fantasy pirate setting, it instantly pulls you into its world, and with a combination of tight and perfectly implemented mechanics, excellently designed stealth sandboxes, and a colourful cast of characters that’s an absolute blast to play as, it delivers a consistently fun and inventive adventure where the stealth, tactics, and experimentation never lose any of their charm, right up until the credits roll.” Read the full review through here.

To learn more about the game, make sure to check out our interview with Mimimi Games’ head of design Moritz Wagner.

In keeping with Mimimi’s track record, Shadow Gambit sees the developer tackling another completely different setting and using it to great effect. Like the feudal Japan setting of Shadow Tactics and the Wild West setting of Desperados 3, Shadow Gambit’s fantasy pirate world serves as a solid backdrop for the experience, and is consistently used to great effect. Combining tried-and-true pirate tropes with a dash of the supernatural – involving everything from spirits and sentient ships to eldritch horrors and more – the setting carries a very unique flavour that helps it instantly stand out, while all of those elements also bleed into the gameplay in some interesting ways.

"Shadow Gambit’s fantasy pirate world serves as a solid backdrop for the experience, and is consistently used to great effect. Combining tried-and-true pirate tropes with a dash of the supernatural – involving everything from spirits and sentient ships to eldritch horrors and more – the setting carries a very unique flavour that helps it instantly stand out, while all of those elements also bleed into the gameplay in some interesting ways."

The story told in the game itself isn’t particularly captivating – it does its job well enough in keeping you at least somewhat engage, even if it never truly enraptures you – and the cast of characters, though colourful and filled with personality, doesn’t ever touch the heights of the ensemble that starred in, say, Desperados 3, but even so, thanks to its excellently-realized setting and thoroughly built up world, Shadow Gambit is able to make its stamp even with its narrative elements.

Unsurprisingly, however, it’s the gameplay that truly shines here. Once again, Mimimi Games has crafted a real-time tactical stealth experience that manages to strike the perfect balance between being densely packed with interlocking stealth mechanics, while being incredibly easy to understand and hop straight into. On a fundamental level, Shadow Gambit does an excellent job, right from the get go, of communicating some of its core mechanics, from vision cones to situations where noise can attract attention, from how light and darkness affect enemies’ visibility to how you can use obstructions in their line of sight to your advantage. Visually, all of this is presented in incredibly clean and instantly readable fashion, so that all the important information you might need while you’re stealthing about can instantly be pulled up, without things ever getting too cluttered or becoming too overwhelming.

What helps those fundamental mechanics truly shine is how well-designed every map is. Throughout the story, Shadow Gambit takes you to a variety of locations, from a dense forest ruled over by an ancient, eldritch tree to an island that’s been taken over by the Inquisition and turned into a horrifying prison camp, and not is there plenty of visual variety to be found across all of these different maps, they also present unique challenges in how they’re designed. Some areas might have plenty of man-made structures that you can use for cover, others might be dominated by water bodies, and others still could be designed around different levels of elevation.

"Throughout the story, Shadow Gambit takes you to a variety of locations, from a dense forest ruled over by an ancient, eldritch tree to an island that’s been taken over by the Inquisition and turned into a horrifying prison camp, and not is there plenty of visual variety to be found across all of these different maps, they also present unique challenges in how they’re designed."

Thanks to the variety in the design of the locations you find yourself in, you can never get too comfortable with your surroundings, and routinely have to keep devising new tactics and strategies to counter unfamiliar challenges. Different enemy types also come with unique attributes, which brings further variation to the proceedings. Acolytes, for instance, are your low-level grunts and are pretty easy to deal with or distract, but other, more powerful enemy types are much more reluctant to leave their posts or patrols, while some can even require unique strategies to be taken out.

It also helps that Shadow Gambit encourages you to be creative in the solutions you come up with. Like Mimimi’s past games, it creates vast stealth sandboxes, fills them with challenges and obstacles, and litters potential solutions everywhere, letting you choose how to proceed. Which hiding places you want to use, if you want to take a particularly stealthy approach at all, what routes you want to take to get to your destination- there’s no shortage of variables in any given situation you might find yourself in, and the freedom with which you can approach almost all of them never ceases to impress.

Add to that the fact that the game turns save scumming – which was very much crucial to both Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 – into an actual named feature, and you get a game where trial and error, and by extension, experimentation, end up serving as vital pillars of the experience. With the single press of a button, you can record “Memories”, which you can then turn time back to any time you want, allowing you to undo failures with great ease in order to try and further tweak the execution of your strategy, or to come up with an entirely new solution. And when you do finally manage to get past tough challenges through careful planning and execution, with each character playing their part to perfection- that never stops being incredibly gratifying.

"Shadow Gambit encourages you to be creative in the solutions you come up with. Like Mimimi’s past games, it creates vast stealth sandboxes, fills them with challenges and obstacles, and litters potential solutions everywhere, letting you choose how to proceed."

Speaking of the characters- without a shadow of doubt though, the standout strength of Shadow Gambit’s real-time tactics stealth is its cast of characters, all of whom bring so much more to the table in terms of mechanics than they do in terms of the story. Shadow Gambit lets you slowly expand your crew of pirates with colourful personalities as you progress further in the game, and each new addition brings something completely new to the table. Afia, the central protagonist, can phase in and out of existence and blink to an enemy’s location to catch them by surprise, while Pinkus can transport his spirit into someone else’s body to take control of their mind. Suleidy has the power to control plans and spores and can create bushes to hide in, while Teresa can use her crossbow to take out targets from great distances. Gaelle can stuff people into her canon and shoot them at other people, while Toya can throw small paper charms that he can then teleport himself to.

Each character comes with a unique and inventive set of abilities, and regardless of what the makeup of your party looks like, they can all be incredibly useful, and can be used in increasingly creative ways. Jumping into Shadow Mode to pause the action and using their abilities in conjunction to get past a particularly tricky challenge never stops being fun, and regardless of what your party’s makeup look like – you can only have a maximum of three characters in any given quest – you never really feel like you’re stuck with someone less interesting than the others, because they’re all so much fun to use. Shadow Gambit also smartly encourages you to keep changing up your party from mission to mission rather than sticking with the same crew, because if a character sits out a mission, on their next mission, they’ll increase your vigor rewards, so having different parties in each mission lets you make faster progress towards unlocking upgrades for character abilities.

Between missions, Shadow Gambit takes you to the Red Marley, a sentient ship that also serves as the central hub location, where you can engage in side activities (like short, character-specific missions), speak with the members of your crew, or unlock upgrades. This is one area where the game falters more than it succeeds. The character-specific missions, known as Crew Tales, are dull and uninteresting with almost no exceptions, while ability upgrades can take too long to unlock, and don’t all feel equally useful. Thankfully, Shadow Gambit seems fully aware that the downtime between missions is not where its strengths lie, and doesn’t waste too much time in getting you right back into the thick of things.

"Between missions, Shadow Gambit takes you to the Red Marley, a sentient ship that also serves as the central hub location, where you can engage in side activities (like short, character-specific missions), speak with the members of your crew, or unlock upgrades."

Going into Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect, and though the game doesn’t surprise or upend expectations in any real way, it does live up to them with great aplomb. Not only is it mechanically tight, dense, and wonderfully nuanced, it’s also an incredibly rewarding tactics experience that encourages you to tackle its stealth sandboxes however you see fit. From the way its maps are designed to how wonderfully varied its characters are in gameplay to how the game’s clearly defined ruleset always seems to work exactly the way it should, Shadow Gambit has all the elements in place to make for an excellent, extremely replayable, and consistently enjoyable stealth experience.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

Baldur’s Gate 3

It’s a testament to the kind of year that 2023 has been that Baldur’s Gate 3 is only one of many major releases. Nevertheless, Larian Studios’ tremendous role-playing game is a dream come true for Dungeons and Dragons fans. It offers a dozen classes, 46 subclasses, over 600 Spells, 11 races, 31 subraces and many more options to customize your character.

With a massive campaign that spans over 75 hours on a single playthrough with dozens of quests and multiple locations to explore, Baldur’s Gate 3 promises peak role-playing when it launches on August 3rd for PC.

Tower of Fantasy (PS4, PS5)

Hotta Studio’s Tower of Fantasy is an open-world action RPG, albeit with a sci-fi twist. As a customizable character, players travel the surface, learning more about the fall of civilization at the hands of Omnium, and battling all manner of threats. With four-player co-op, World Bosses and numerous quests, Tower of Fantasy also features an arena mode for PvP.

The combat also employs some interesting mechanics like equipping three weapons with different roles, building up charge and switching between them for more damage, and Simulacrums to transform into a unique character. Though currently available on PC, Tower of Fantasy arrives on August 8th for PS4 and PS5.

WrestleQuest

Wrestling video games are often simulations, rarely arcade titles, with the hottest talent. WrestleQuest takes a different approach, imagining the hero’s journey from the perspective of an up-and-coming wrestler in a fantastical pixel art universe. You start as a rookie and work through the ranks by training and learning from the greats like “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Andre the Giant and more.

As you customize your wrestler’s moves and entrance, you take on all sorts of opponents and fight alongside legends like Diamond Dallas Page, the Road Warriors and more. WrestleQuest launches on August 8th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Atlas Fallen

In a world where everything has become sand and humanity is oppressed, you play as an Unnamed and discover a magical gauntlet. With the ability to manipulate and weaponize sand, you embark on a quest to take down Thelos and restore humanity. Developed by Deck13 of The Surge fame, Atlas Fallen is more of an action-adventure title with three weapons – the Dunecleaver, Sandwhip and Knuckledust – that change shape as you accrue Momentum in combat.

They can further be upgraded with over 100 Essence Stones, encouraging experimentation. Atlas Fallen releases on August 10th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC, and on top of lasting 25 to 30 hours, the entire game supports two-player co-op.

Sprawl

Would it be much of a month without a retro-style FPS? Probably not, but even by boomer shooter standards, MAETH’s Sprawl looks intriguing. Set in a cyberpunk city, you control former special ops SEVEN, who seeks to escape and venture to the SPIRE, while a mysterious voice pushes her onward. Corpo forces oppose you, but thanks to the Icarus implant, you can wall-run and slow down time, slaying enemies with katanas, pistols and a shotgun. Sprawl is out in August for PC, with a more definite release date to be announced.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

From the team behind Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun comes a brand-new strategy stealth title. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is set in the Golden Age of Piracy, as you venture the Lost Caribbean with eight crewmates, each possessing unique skills. You can freely select crew members for a mission and take any approach, utilizing new magical abilities to one-up enemies.

In addition to cleverly executed strategies and split-second timing, you can pause the game and instantly rewind to a previous point to try something else. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew arrives on August 17th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.

Madden NFL 24

For the uninitiated, EA Sports’ Madden NFL series is its other golden goose that has proven a monstrous success year in and year out with even fewer changes than FIFA. However, as EA transitions from FIFA to its new EA Sports FC franchise, Madden NFL 24 offers several improvements. FieldSENSE returns for added realism and control; the AI is smarter and more reactive; Franchise Mode features Free Agency changes and new commissioner tools; and new modes like 3v3 Superstar Showdown promise some unique experiences. Launching on August 18th, Madden NFL 24 will be available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC with cross-play support.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Lethal League developer Team Reptile presents a spiritual successor to Sega’s Jet Set Radio – Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. As Red, players join the Bomb Rush Crew and compete against rival crews for turf, tagging spots and earning REP while executing all kinds of tricks, whether it’s inline skating, skateboarding or BMX. Police forces will try to stop you, and new members join the crew, backed by the tunes of Jet Set Radio composer Hideki Naganuma. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk arrives on August 18th for PC and Nintendo Switch.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Based on the 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a new asymmetrical multiplayer title, which previously published Friday the 13th: The Game. Releasing on August 18th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC, it sees Ana Flores, Julie Crawford, Connie Taylor, Sonny Williams and Leland McKinney searching for Ana’s sister Maria.

Of course, the Slaughter family, including The Hitchhiker, The Cook and good ol’ Leatherface aren’t keen on letting them escape. The victims must use stealth and complete objectives to escape while the killers stop them. It’s pretty straightforward and backed by plenty of realistic kills.

Fort Solis

This cinematic sci-fi adventure game from Black Drakkar Games and Fallen Leaf is unique in its immersion. There are no camera cuts, loading times or a HUD, and its story is composed of four chapters with an all-star cast featuring Roger Clark (of Red Dead Redemption 2 fame), Troy Baker (The Last of Us) and Julia Brown (World on Fire). As engineer Jack Leary, players venture to the titular Fort Solis for a routine inspection and find the crew missing. Strange events begin to occur, pushing Leary to the brink. Fort Solis launches on August 22nd for PS5 and PC.

Immortals of Aveum

Ascendant Studios’ magic-based first-person shooter has been five years in the making, utilizing Unreal Engine 5.1 for its stunning visuals and Michael Kirkbride of The Elder Scrolls fame to help craft its narrative. Set in the world of Aveum, with Lucium and Rasharm at constant war, players control Jak, a recruit in the Order of the Immortals who looks to take down the big bad Sandrakk.

As a Triarch, Jak can utilize all three Colors of magic in devastating ways. With several different spells and talents, tons of gear pieces, and a meaty campaign with plenty of side content, Immortals of Aveum could be a dark horse in a jam-packed month. It releases on August 22nd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon

FromSoftware’s latest entry in the mech combat series begins with a clean slate, taking players to Rubicon 3, where megacorporations and factions battle over a precious resource Coral. As a mercenary pilot, you pilot a fully customizable Armored Core, utilizing different long-range and melee weapons while battling all manner of mechanized opposition in fast-paced combat.

Larger environments, seamless switching between projectiles and melee attacks, a new stagger mechanic, multiple endings and more await fans along with the return of the Arena when Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon arrives on August 25th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy

It’s hard to keep a band of heroes down, especially the Heroes of Trine. Amadeus the Wizard, Zoya the Thief, and Pontius the Knight embark on a new adventure to battle the Clockwork army. As a 2.5D action-puzzle platformer with co-op support, players must use each character’s skills to traverse environments in unique ways (like using Pontius’s shield to skate across water).

A new combat system and bosses, more variety with skill quests, and an adaptive difficulty to encourage replay value await fans when Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy launches on August 31st for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch.

RIDE 5

If you’ve looked upon The Crew Motorfest or Forza Motorsport and wanted something more bike-oriented, RIDE 5 may be worth checking out. The latest in Milestone S.r.l.’s motorcycle sim franchise features over 35 tracks and 200 bikes to ride. This year’s Career Mode sees players working through various Rivals to make a name for themselves, braving the dynamic weather to succeed.

Along with extensive motorcycle customization, the Race Creator lets you shape custom tracks and scenarios while riding aids help ease newcomers into the experience. RIDE 5 is out on August 24th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.

Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle

As the sequel to Invader Studios’ Resident Evil-inspired Daymare 1998, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle is a prequel with new characters, improved visuals and a revamped UI. It also features dismemberment, a la Dead Space, and a scanner for revealing items and puzzles in the environment. While it won’t compete with Dead Space Remake, Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle may be an enjoyable blast from the past for fans of 90s survival horror when it releases on August 30th for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

As you can expect from the video, it gives us a pretty good look at the kind of gameplay we can expect from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. Starting things off by showing us the ship that serves as our home base, before taking us to Calamity Reef for a mission titled Small Crew, Big Plans.

From there on out, we get a good look at the kinds of tools players will have available as they sneak their way through the game’s various levels, as well as some glimpses at the game’s story.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew was recently showcased during the PC Gaming Show earlier this week, and is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 17. Before its release, players can check out a free demo that will be available during Steam Next Fest between June 19 and June 26.