Peaky Blinders: Mastermind

Post-war Birmingham becomes a tense isometric puzzle box where the Shelby family’s criminal ambitions depend on timing, deception, and nerve rather than gunfire alone. Set before the television series begins, Peaky Blinders: Mastermind follows Tommy Shelby as he investigates a threat aimed at dismantling the family business and earns his reputation as its sharpest strategist. The atmosphere captures the show’s grime, smoky back rooms, industrial streets, and uneasy alliances, while presenting the story through an accessible, stylized adventure format. It is less about reenacting famous scenes and more about seeing how the gang functions when every job can go wrong.

Each mission asks you to guide several Shelbys through compact locations, assigning tasks such as distracting guards, unlocking doors, pickpocketing valuables, scouting routes, or dealing with enemies. The key mechanic is a timeline system that lets you pause, rewind, and overlap each character’s actions, effectively choreographing a heist until everyone reaches the right place at the right second. Tommy, Arthur, Polly, Ada, Finn, and John each bring distinct talents, so success comes from combining their strengths instead of relying on one all-purpose protagonist. Plans rarely work on the first attempt, and the game encourages experimentation by making rewinds central to its design rather than a punishment-free afterthought.

What separates Peaky Blinders: Mastermind from a conventional tie-in is its focus on synchronized problem-solving, closer in spirit to a compact real-time tactics puzzle than an action game. Missions reward clean, efficient solutions and invite replaying them to improve completion times, although the relatively brief campaign and fixed story mean it is not an endlessly deep strategy sandbox. Its cel-shaded presentation does not fully mimic the show’s prestige-drama look, but it communicates character and period well while keeping objectives readable. Fans of Peaky Blinders and players who enjoy planning games like Commandos or Shadow Tactics in a lighter, more guided form find the most to enjoy here; action-first players may find its deliberate pace too restrained.