Mimimi Games' highly anticipated Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew has just been released on GOG!While it was hard for us to put the game down, we also had the absolute pleasure to speak with
Moritz Wagner – Shadow Gambit's Head of Design – who talked us through the title's development process, the journey that awaits the players, and more.
Hope you enjoy the read!
For starters, maybe you could tell us a little about Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew – what can players expect from the title? Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is an all-new stealth strategy game set during an alternate history of the Golden Age of Piracy. The Curse of Lost Souls haunts the mysterious island chain known as the Lost Caribbean, which is under the control of the terrible forces of the Inquisition. They despise all that is supernatural, use soul-devouring fire and stand between you and the mysterious treasure of the legendary Captain Mordechai.You embark on a journey with cursed pirate Afia to join a living ghost ship, the Red Marley, and seek the legendary Black Pearls to revive a cursed crew of your own. Each of your eight shipmates is a playable character with an individual personality and armed with unique supernatural powers. On deck of the Red Marley, you plan your next mission or just hang out with your crew mates while they enjoy their un-life. With individual character missions you can find out about their backstories, learn who they are and what led them on their cursed journeys.
Moreover, over the course of the game you will go ashore on a variety of exotic islands in the Lost Caribbean on your quest to find Captain Mordechai’s mysterious treasure. From locales oozing with cursed soul magic to tropical beaches and lively pirate shanty towns: Every island is a unique hand-crafted sandbox where adventures await. Freely select your crew members before embarking on each mission. Plot your own path to enter and exit each island, be stealthy or more head-on in your play style. Cleverly combine the magical skills of your crew to take out enemies with carefully considered tactics. And feel like a brilliant mastermind when your plan clicks perfectly into place!For over eight years we've been making Stealth Strategy games which combine our favorite parts of each genre. For Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, we decided to self-publish our game for the first time. It was a very big decision for us, but one that opens up new opportunities for us as a studio. We were super excited about the possibilities to experiment with a completely new setting, characters etc. Working on a new IP not only gives us more freedom than ever before in terms of our decisions regarding game design, story, setting etc, – but also means that the new IP really belongs to us and can be explored further in the future.
The core idea of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is extremely interesting, with an incredible undead pirates design, The Cursed Crew – we can’t help but wonder though, why pirates? Is there any story behind the idea for this theme?First answer: It's cool and has not been done before in this genre.Second: We like the vibe of pirates as it fits the enhanced player freedom and open game structure of the game as well as our style as studio very well when looking at the narrative cornerstones. Thanks to the fantastic pirate setting, we can be lighthearted and fun, but at the same time strike more serious tones, with deep characters.Last: Going full fantasy with magic gives us a lot of freedom to design meaningful and crazy new mechanics and skills for the characters – or change existing ones. Cursed pirates with magical abilities were a perfect fit for that.
And speaking of this main theme, pirates, could you give us a small overview of the creative process behind Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew? How do you go about translating ideas into gameplay mechanics and immersive worlds?We start by developing certain pillars and grander ideas that form the core of the game. Of course many of those are based on our genre and previous games, but for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew we wanted to add several things and re-invent the genre in certain parts.The biggest pillar we wanted to expand on was player freedom and the sandbox aspect of the game. So we started discussing ideas like the open island structure, free character choice on missions etc. These types of changes can have far reaching consequences in every part of the game, so we started prototyping things, testing them and then slowly getting to a point where it feels right with all the systems in place.For example, for the free character selection we had to completely rethink how we tell our story. In our previous games we knew exactly what characters were present in a mission, so we could write dialogue perfectly suited for this. To still create a deep narrative we had to re-think that approach. We developed a system where the main characters can also "watch" missions from the sidelines and still chime in. We have the Red Marley as an important character that can always be present and offer dialogue. We also added the HUB, which has many important narrative sequences and dialogues, where all characters can be present.
Things like the open islands with entry and exit points also have a huge impact on level design. So the level designer really had to re-think how they approach building enemy setups and locations. It became even more about building open spaces that can be tackled from any direction, than in our previous games. Ultimately, you can't just think of a particular skill around which you want to design a level, but groups of skills. You have to start by saying: I am building this enemy-encounter in a way that if people can use any of the new movement skills, they can enter it from anywhere. Instead of only saying: I will think about Afia's Blink attack and build it for that. This sounds a little abstract, but I think in the end it becomes similar, just more "open". You lose a little control over the specific details of level design, but players gain freedom, which can be a good thing.
Now, to shift the subject a little. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew boasts an impressive array of diverse characters, the titular Cursed Crew. How do you ensure that each character feels distinct in terms of gameplay and personality?For the characters we knew we wanted to have supernatural abilities from the beginning. Once we knew that we had magic and we could experiment with whatever we wanted without having to think about "what could this be in the real world?" we just started to think a little more crazy. A lot of stuff we came up with has to do with movement and re-positioning of characters. This is where most of the new "power" the characters have comes from. It's a rather unexplored field in our previous games and now we went into it hard and created a ton of cool abilities that revolve around it.What we also looked into is how we can do changes to the "classic" skills you mentioned to make them feel fresh. We still have blinds and stones/coins and a whistle. But when it felt good and there was a possibility, we tried to give it a cooler flavor and enhance it. For example Afia's time-freeze ability. It's rather similar to a “blind” ability. But it also makes guards not hear anymore, which can be very powerful. So it was just about finding a cool and splashy ability that was fun and had a lot of gameplay-value — and then build a character around that. It's a tricky process, but very fun to do. I think the characters came out great and are one of the biggest strengths of the game.
Whenever I hear playtesters or people in the studio talk about characters, they have WILDLY different favorites. And every time a person takes the time to play a character they didn't like for some reason, they grow to love them after some time, since they discover the cool stuff you can do with that character. It's great. You can read more on the character-design process in this blog post.Balancing is, of course, one of the hardest tasks in game development, especially with eight characters that you can select freely for each mission.Over time, we got a feel for which skills and combinations were likely to work and which were not. In the end, however, it was a try-and-error principle until we were satisfied with the results.And on a bit less serious matter – do you perhaps have any funny story that you’d like to share, from the process of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew development? Any anecdotes, fun facts?There is always a ton of stuff but when you get asked it's hard to remember specific things, hehe. I don't have a really good one but one thing that comes to mind: One of the playable characters is called Pinkus von Presswald in the game. He is my personal favorite. The ridiculous name comes from my pen and paper characters: In every game I basically only play people from my imaginary "von Presswald '' family and they usually are similar in character to him. I have played dozens of them over the years in different P&P systems. So, I'm super happy that we got a cool von Presswald into the game, especially because our writers, the artists and the voice actor just made him sooo perfect. Go Pinkus ♥.
To conclude though, what advice, tips, would you give to aspiring game designers who hope to create games as captivating as Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew?Oh, difficult question. I think you need to find a type of game and genre you are passionate about. This can help in getting deep into understanding how these games work and what their appeal is. For our games something that is very important to us is actually the gameplay and interaction. We want that to be at the front and center. The thing that makes games unique when compared to other media is that they are interactive.What we want to do is to try to say "Yes" to what players want to do in a game as often as possible. But this doesn't mean just doing EVERYTHING, since that's impossible and would make for a bad game. It's about creating rules and systems that allow for a lot of interaction and fun gameplay — and then it's very important that players can understand those rules. They basically need to know the playing-field they are on and what to expect from it. Because once they do, they will think "inside" the rules and start experimenting with them more and more and get into all the cool stuff you have built with your systems.Then it becomes extremely important to never betray them and break those rules unless you really have to. If I, as a designer, teach the player that something in a game works, and then a little later I create a situation where that interaction may not work for story or other reasons, it feels bad and breaks the central "promise" that the game makes in terms of its interactivity. If this happens too often, players will lose trust and stop experimenting and trying to interact in a meaningful way.As designers we need to carefully choose those rules and lay them out in a way that we can support them, especially regarding our budget of visuals, storytelling etc. and then really be a champion during development for this to stay true. To never break those rules. This will cause a lot of headaches but I think, ultimately, this is what creates very meaningful gameplay-experiences that are what our medium really is made for. Of course, this is only true for a certain type of game. A gameplay-focused game. If you want to focus on narrative or visuals things this is different.
We'd like to thank Moritz for the interview and for shedding light on the awesomeness that is Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. If you're hungry for more, you can get the game on GOG right now, and jumpstart your life as a (cursed) pirate! 