Peaky Blinders Mastermind was developed by FuturLab and released on August 20, 2020 for the Nintendo Switch and Steam as well asPS4 and Xbox One. It operates as a puzzle adventure style game with one player gameplay. It was published by Curve Digital.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is not unlike Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, featuring point and click, top-down gameplay in a number of puzzle games that require strategic positioning and thought. Just like Shadow Tactics, you take control of multiple members of your party, with them being different members of the Shelby family. You use these characters to have them, as Nintendo.com states, “…perform their actions in parallel.” A major difference for Peaky Blinders however, is the fact that Tommy Shelby has the ability to make up the possible scenarios that can take place, in his head. This allows players to, as Nintendo states, “freely reset, fast-forward and rewind, until the plan is perfectly adjusted.”
As it goes without stating, you must complete each mission undetected, so the game heavily emphasizes that you pick the characters and abilities that correspond best to the tasks you have to complete for a mission completion. On paper, the gameplay seems like it would be super intriguing and something that would have your attention for your entire playthrough, but the game makes a fatal mistake, in my opinion.
Since there is no penalty for rewinding time if you made a bad choice. I feel as though this rewards the player for messing up their playthrough and it reminds me of the times where, as a kid mind you, I would purposely pick a dialogue option in Mass Effect or Oblivion just to see what would happen, it go badly and then I load a previous save and make the right choice. I would very much prefer if the game had not allowed the rewind aspect and instead just allow you to make all your moves in one sweep, as you do and see it all play out together. I honestly feel as though the rewind feature seriously holds the games’ difficulty back. The game features 10 missions that only truly get difficult and complex around mission eight. I wish the whole game had followed the formula of the final three missions, as that would have been very exciting and would have engaged my full thought-process. They forced you to split up your team and maneuver around the environment in ways not truly present in the early game.
Graphics:
For a top-down puzzle game on the Switch, I have to say that the graphics looked very good. I have to be completely honest and state that I didn’t have high expectations for the graphics when I first downloaded the game, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. They’re very solid for a game of this style and size. While I don’t personally think the quality of graphics so much with a game like this, I was satisfied with their quality.
Art Style:
The art style was fine. I liked it for what it was. Reminded me a bit of a darker comic book and still retained the look of the show and helped with the story telling. Then again, I’m a sucker for a game embracing its art style fully and not trying to be multiple things at once.
Music:
I am not the biggest fan of the music in this game, as it’s just generic indie rock in the background. I didn’t think they would have any real chance of getting any of the music tracks from the show, especially since the game doesn’t feature any spoken dialogue, but the music is just kind of there. It’s not bad, but it’s not memorable either, as it didn’t really impact my playing experience in a meaningful way. To me at least, there were no noteworthy tracks, but no garbage ones.
Loyalty to the Show:
The game does do a great job of getting the likenesses of the show’s characters correct. Tommy has the flat cap he is best-known for and looks exactly like Cillian Murphy, albeit from a top-down view. The other characters, Aunt Polly and Arthur Shelby also look very much like their on-screen counterparts. While there is no dialogue spoken in the game, I was very satisfied with how the game visually portrays all the major characters. The written dialogue does seem a bit off, but not to a point where I was actively disliking it.
The story of the game involves the Peaky Blinders asserting their country over their patch of Birmingham after a Peaky Blinder is accused of killing a Chinese opium dealer. That doesn’t really matter, as the main gist of it is that it serves as a prequel to season one of the show and is meant to showcase Tommy’s rise to power and the growth of his ability to manipulate situations in order to suit his needs. The story was fine, for the most part. The missions weren’t super complex until late in the game and that is where I wish the game had started, difficulty and complexity-wise.
Conclusion:
Overall, the game was a fine addition to the Peaky Blinders universe, however, I don’t think that it takes advantage of its core mechanics or embraces how fun and difficult it could have made itself. If the whole game had been missions eight and on, then I think the game would have been much better, but it was not and it suffered for it.
The music is fine, but the rewind mechanic really kills the game for me. No spoken dialogue is a slight miss, but it doesn’t ruin it. I would recommend this game only if you are a die-hard Peaky Blinders fan, as you can power through this game in around five hours. Other than that, you’re not missing much if you don’t particularly care for this genre of game. If I had to rate it out of 10, I’d give this a 6/10.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided