Shadow Gambit The Cursed Crew is more than your typical undead pirate game with a plucky cast of misfit characters. It’s also a very well-made stealth strategy game that takes a rather interesting approach to the saving and loading prevalent in the genre. Nothing that hasn’t been done before but the execution is what stands out more.
In this Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew trophy guide, we’ll go through everything you need to know in your quest to claim the captain’s treasure and that coveted Platinum trophy. It’s not as demanding as other stealth games but it’s sure to take up quite a bit of time.
There are 27 trophies the player can earn:
- 1 Platinum trophy
- 7 Gold trophies
- 5 Silver trophies
- 14 Bronze trophies
Shadow Gambit The Cursed Crew Trophy List
Platinum trophy
- It’s Been a Grand Adventure: Earn all trophies
Gold trophies
- All Good Things: Finish Act 3
- Corsair: Get 60% overall completion
- Freebooter: Get 70% overall completion
- Marauder: Get 80% overall completion
- Pirates Assemble!: Unlock all characters
- Fully Decked: Unlock all skill upgrades
- Welcome Back Jester: Unlock Virgillio
Silver trophies
- Somewhere Deep in the Lost Caribbean: Discover all islands
- The Gambit Has Begun: Finish Act 2
- Buccaneer: Get 30% overall completion
- Seadog: Get 40% overall completion
- Privateer: Get 50% overall completion
Bronze trophies
- A New Journey: Set sail with the Marley for the first time
- The Adventure Begins: Finish Act 1
- This Belongs in a Museum: Collect all of Mordechai’s Relics
- Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Finish your first Captain’s Test
- Swabble: Get 10% overall completion
- Powder Monkey: Get 20% overall completion
- With Great Powers…: Unlock your first skill upgrade
- Persistent Parasite: Finish Suleidy’s Crew Tale
- Fishy Fish: Finish Toya’s Crew Tale
- Tobacco Travesty: Finish Pinkus’ Crew Tale
- Accursed Artifacts: Finish Quentin’s Crew Tale
- Lyrical Longing: Finish Gaelles’ Crew Tale
- Jaded Judge: Finish Teresa’s Crew Tale
- Rustic Recipe: Finish John’s Crew Tale
The trophy run for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a straightforward one, though it does mean that you’ll have an easy time doing all the trophies. The biggest hurdle is most likely going to come from overall completion. Followed closely by the Fully Decked Gold Trophy. Getting all the skills in the game is a time-consuming process that’ll have you maintain a rotating roster of pirates in order to get as quickly as possible.
There are 3 acts in the game’s story. You unlock The Adventure Begins after Act 1, The Gambit Has Begun after Act 2, and All Good Things for finishing Act 3. On average, each mission will run for about 35-40 minutes. Pivotal story missions can run close to 1 hour in length depending on how thorough you want to be. If you’re playing it at a casual pace, you’ll probably finish Act 2 after 18 hours.
To get the Somewhere Deep in the Lost Caribbean Silver Trophy, you’ll need to discover all the islands on the map. This task will take you well into the third act. You can track your progress by observing the clouds that cover the map. Any potential mission areas have clouds covering them.
Overall completion trophies: Swabble, Powder Monkey, Buccaneer, Seadog, Privateer, Corsair, Freebooter, and Marauder. The hardest part of the completion process is collecting enough challenge coins for each mission. You get these coins doing specific actions that are unique to the mission. Other coins require you to perform actions unique to the characters you brought to the mission. I have trouble doing this sometimes and I suspect it’s mostly due to the game not registering the action. However, I could be wrong. I’m just grateful that the game doesn’t ask us to get 100% completion. It took me less than a dozen hours to get 10% completion. I shudder to think what a 100% complete game would look like.
Crew Tales optional interactions that the player can take part in when not on a mission. They are usually progressed by taking control of a crewmate and interacting with a quest marker. As far as I know, there are no quests that require you to go to a location outside of the ship. Some tales are quicker to progress than others. That’s more to do with where you are in relation to the story than anything else. So be prepared for some downtime depending on which characters you decide to bring back.
This is the list of Bronze trophies in connection with each crew tale:
- Persistent Parasite
- Fishy Fish
- Tobacco Travesty
- Accursed Artifacts
- Lyrical Longing
- Jaded Judge
- Rustic Recipe
You can get the This Belongs in a Museum Bronze trophy after completing the mission islands at the tail end of Act 2. Collecting all three of Mordechai’s relics contains Soul Energy that you will need to resurrect crewmates along with the mysterious Black Pearls.
At some point in the story, your crew will take part in Mordechai’s Shadow Gambit. This is where you’ll start a series of Captain tests. You’ll earn the Mirror Mirror on the Wall Bronze trophy for finishing the first one.
And that’s everything we have for this Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew trophy guide. We were honestly surprised that none of the trophies involved recording and/or invoking memories. In fairness, that number would probably be very high considering how often we “save and load states” in the games. All-in-all, a semi-reasonable ask save for the overall completion trophies.
If you are interested to know more about the game, check out our review of Shadow Gambit.
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (via Steam, Epic Games, and GOG).