Not to beat the dead horse, but Mimimi Games, a gem of an indie developer team specialising in the ultra-niche stealth strategy genre, has closed shop.
Yet, there is news.
Hooded Horse, purveyors of niche and high-quality strategy games, have now signed on to publish this completed game, a game with no more updates planned. This includes the publishing rights for the console release alongside PC. The game will be “integrated into the publisher’s standard suite of services for released titles.”
“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.”
It may strike as an odd decision for a publisher to take on publishing rights for a game that didn’t do enough to keep the development team afloat. There’s no plans for game updates as well. But that makes it all the more significant.
Shadow Gambit may be lost to time should Mimimi Games never resurface (the game was self-published by them), so having a new publisher on board should preserve the game by having it remain available, and maybe reach to a bigger audience it deserved to have had when it launched in 2023.
And given how good of a stable Hooded Horse has curated, from the popular Manor Lords to last year’s excellent Against The Storm, Shadow Gambit joining this lineup could be seen as a seal of approval by the indie publishing label that knows good strategy games.
Shadow Gambit is now a certified Hooded Horse classic, if you will.
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is still available on PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG) and Xbox Series X|S.