Peaky Blinders: Mastermind

Peaky Blinders: Mastermind is a top-down, real-time tactics puzzler set in post-World War I Birmingham, developed by FuturLab and published by Curve Digital. The game is a prequel to Season 1 of the TV show, following Tommy Shelby and his crew as they claw back control of Small Heath from rival gangs. Genre-wise, the closest reference points are Commandos or Desperados, except the fundamental design pivot here is time manipulation rather than pure stealth layering. Think of it as a lightweight rewind-based tactics game wearing a period-crime-drama costume. The central mechanic is the whole game, so it is worth spending time on it. You control up to six characters across ten missions, one at a time, issuing their movement and actions. After setting a character on their path, you rewind the clock, switch to a different gang member, and operate them within the same shared timeline. Every character has a distinct ability: Tommy persuades NPCs to open locked doors or hand over keys, Arthur breaks through walls, Finn squeezes into tight gaps, Ada disrupts guard sight lines with conversation. The challenge is not the individual actions but the synchronisation. Each level runs against a strict time cap, so you are constantly trimming seconds, rerouting characters, and iterating until all the plates spin at exactly the right moment. When a run clicks, the payoff is real. Where the design stumbles is pacing. The opening two-thirds of the ten missions ease in slowly enough that puzzle fans will find themselves waiting for the system to open up fully. The final third is where the complexity finally arrives and it does land well, but critics and players alike have flagged that the interesting design comes too late and ends too quickly. Steam data puts the player base at mostly positive across roughly a thousand reviews, which is a reasonable temperature check for a niche tie-in, but the common complaint is content volume, with some players finishing in under three hours on standard difficulty. Hard mode strips out waypoints and visible guard radii, which adds meaningful planning overhead and stretches the experience for anyone willing to commit. Bronze, silver, and gold time targets on each mission offer a reason to replay, but there is no mod ecosystem or post-launch content to speak of, so the ceiling is what it is. On the presentation side, the isometric art has a painterly, muted period aesthetic that suits Small Heath convincingly. There is no voice acting from the show's cast, which is an obvious budget constraint rather than an oversight, and the writing does not capture the show's particular menace. The PC version shipped with a 30 fps lock that frustrated some players at launch, and ultrawide support was absent. Neither issue has been a showstopper for most, but they are worth knowing about before you commit. Is this game for you if you have never watched Peaky Blinders? Probably yes, actually. The prequel framing makes it a clean entry point, the characters are sketched clearly enough to follow, and the time-rewind mechanic is a genuinely interesting one that stands on its own outside the IP. If you approach it as a short, focused tactics puzzler in the Desperados family with an unusual time-layer twist, the ten missions feel like a complete, if compact, statement. Fans of the show who expect the show's tone will leave disappointed. Puzzle-tactics fans who price accordingly will find something worth their evening.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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