There has been a stealth tactics-shaped hole in my heart since genre game smiths Mimimi Games, developers of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, Desperados III and Shadow Tactics shuttered late last year. Gone is that tactical feeling of infiltrating areas and pulling off the impossible in real-time. Until now. Coming to save me and frankly gaming as a whole is Sumerian Six, a new stealth tactics game from Artificer, the developers of the 2023 turn-based tactics game Showgunners. This new effort is not bold. It is not making any new strides for the genre. It is simply more stealth tactics and it’s exactly what I needed.

It’s World War II. You’re controlling a group of six commando scientists on the hunt for turning the tide against the Nazis and disrupting their tech. The story isn’t all that involved. Your group, known as the Enigma Squad (or, obviously, the Sumerian Six), are largely targeting and doing their best to thwart the plans of ex-friend turned super Nazi baddy Hans Kammler’s plans of creating super soldiers with a resource known as Geiststoff.

The crew comprises a pair of adopted siblings named Isabella and Sid. These two will often butt heads when it comes to making decisions in jobs, only becoming more complicated when their headstrong father, who cares more about the mission than his two offspring, is thrown into the mix. Also along for the ride and just as strong in presence is a chemist wielding deadly acid named Rosa, a shapeshifting Werebear and a Mentalist who can enter the spiritual realm to distract and mind control any that stand in their way. There’s not a lot of narrative depth in Sumerian Six, but it’s enough. What? Were you expecting oceans of intricacies in the tactical Nazi-slaying game?

Sumerian Six’s biggest strength is in its gameplay. Through ten missions, you’ll enter fortresses and encampments that feel like Fort Knox, nigh impenetrable. Until you poke and prod that one hole in their security and then the whole thing comes toppling down like dominoes. This is achieved through vision cone dodging and exploiting the environment and its inhabitants with the Enigma Squad’s various supernatural abilities. If all else fails and the alarm is sounded, resulting in hectic combat conditions that are hard to survive, quick saves and reloads are your best friend.

Juxtaposing this, Sid is one of the characters that’s all about going the distance and clearing as much ground as possible, even if it’s a fortress with dozens of guards. He can achieve this with a flash stun to foes that briefly blinds and disables enemies’ vision cones and also the ability for him to possess and piggyback between patrolling enemies. In stealth tactics games, it pays off to be patient and observe. See the route that that enemy walks, study that one tiny fraction of space that is out of another’s view and so on. With these abilities, he has generated many a water-cooler moment of gameplay where I thread positioning him in that one crevice in that alley by hopping out of a possessed body at exactly the right time.

The best part of Sumerian Six or any stealth tactics game like it is the emphasis on experimentation. Missions will initially feel impossible but tinker away with the skillset given to you and before long you’ll see the job through and feel like you’ve pulled off this great big heist. The game knows this is exactly what it’s emulating too and is in on this with its style. At the start of every mission, you’re viewing overhead shots of the map with chalk marks highlighting key areas to go to or paths to take. One of the cast is narrating how exactly they’re going to pull off this whole shebang. It all feels very cool and very Ocean’s Eleven. This is only the start of these feelings. The rapport the crew have is palpable, evident through their banter in jobs. Their relationships are electric and you get the feeling they’re a long-established weirdo Nazi-killing found family.

Stealth tactics games rarely take good advantage of every single corner and crevice of a map. Though there are branching ways to go about an objective, there’s little exploration to find tidbits and whatnot. Sumerian Six breaks this mould and rewards players by having upgrades for their skills be diegetically picked up in the environment. It’s a small addition but a welcome approach. There are no skill trees to get bogged down by and your time is respected. Each pickup you get just boosts the efficiency of skills, be it the range to cast an ability or reload time for a character’s gun. It’s enough of a simple game changer that I did actively go out of my way to collect as many of these pickups as possible, not only aiding in getting to familiarise myself with a map more but also just simply meaning more time in Sumerian Six’s wonderful world.

And what a world it is. Sumerian Six is incredibly striking and richly detailed. I’d have to imagine this game was developed concurrently with last year’s Showgunners but if not I’d have to grab the people at Artificer by the shoulders, shake them and just say ‘How?!’ An early-game snow-drenched castle with scaffolding to allow you climb in and out of buildings at a moment’s notice was particularly showstopping and made for an effective tone-setter of what was to come.

Airbase and production facilities you must blow up come the mission’s conclusion, a decaying Sumerian temple, a Nazi mansion grounds at night… all the missions’ level design is intricate and bespoke. Safe paths that snake behind and underneath highly patrolled areas. Verticality that sees your team picking off guards on rooftops while those underneath are blissfully unaware. You’re taking people out in near plain sight, crouching and sneaking in the shadows. These are a hell of a series of setpieces.

Sumerian Six is more of exactly what I’ve been wanting. It’s Damn good stealth tactics. Artificer taking what they learned in the turn-based tactics genre with Showgunners and applying it in real-time space is incredibly clever. They’ve gone from strength to strength and I can’t wait to see where they go from here. The only way is up.