Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat Review

Taking a different approach from Tin Man Games’ combat focused adventures, Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat is a much more wordy adventure gamebook, focused on the decisions you make rather than dice rolls. For those who were around in the 1980s, think of the difference between Fighting Fantasy books and Choose Your Own Adventure, and you’re about there in terms of what’s on offer.

Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat gives you the opportunity to live everyone’s dream of being the world’s second greatest jewel thief - obviously with a view to being the world’s greatest by the end of the adventure. It’s a fairly lengthy tale with plenty of options to pursue. Refreshingly, amongst the myriad of options to highlight what your methods and motivations are, you can choose what sexuality you want to play too and it has some effect on what unfolds next. Romance plays a reasonable role here, if you so choose to pursue it.

There’s a wealth of dialogue and intrigue to explore, so there’s plenty of reason to replay Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat. One read through takes a reasonable length of time as it is, but you’ll find yourself tempted to explore different paths later on, too.

While Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat won’t win any prizes for looks, given it doesn’t even offer any illustrations, it will draw you in. What it lacks in style, it makes up for with interesting storytelling. A map feature or some way to show what routes you’ve previously pursued would have been nice, but otherwise Thieves’ Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat covers all the relevant bases and proves to be quite an interesting story indeed.