Phil Savage: Since 2016, Mimimi Games has been single handedly keeping the stealth tactics genre alive. Its first game, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, spent years in our Top 100 off the strength of its clever cast of characters – all of them adding fun tactical twists to the job of sneaking silently through a huge, hostile map. Its second, Desperados 3, did justice to one of the major games of the genre’s early ’00s heyday. This year, it released Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, and it’s easily the studio’s best work. Previous games had some quirky abilities, sure, but this time you’re in charge of a band of undead pirates with a full suite of magical powers – every character widening the possibility space of how you approach the challenge ahead.
The basic structure is the same, but finely honed. You’ll crouch in bushes, checking guard patrols and sightlines and slowly engineering your way through. More than character abilities, the best tools for the job are your quicksave key and the ability to synchronise actions to take out multiple guards in one absurdly satisfying keystroke. It’s slow and methodical stuff, and absolute catnip for stealth fans.