Off the Shelf Media

First and foremost, this is a detective game, not like L.A. Noire or Frog Detective. Shadows of Doubt is something entirely its own. It is set in a dystopian alternate history controlled by megacorporations (so not too far off) in 1979, at least that’s the date in my playthrough. Unlike other installments in the detective subgenre, this one is procedurally generated, like loading in a new Minecraft world but here the randomness is applied to the cases you solve.

You play as a former detective turned private investigator sourcing out jobs until you get word someone has met an untimely end in your fair city. I really mean your fair city. Rather than focus on a few prewritten, predetermined cases every other detective game I know, everyone and everything you interact with is entirely unique and freshly loaded in as you play outside of the tutorial.

Yes, that comes with the good and the bad that all procedurally generated games have and I will get into more detail for the categories below. For now, all you need to know is that coming from an avid RPG fan and general lover of detective narratives, this game has my seal of approval. 

As with most indie games, I had not seen much, if anything, about this game aside from the Steam marketplace pop-ups. For reasons I can’t recall, it piqued my interest enough to set it on my wishlist and forget about it. As time has taught me, every so often, a game bubbles up from the indie community that checks the boxes, makes the marks, and tickles the fancy just right to make it next to impossible to put down. This is one of those games. 

Gameplay: 1 

In less than two weeks of having it, I already spent more than a few long nights playing, amounting to almost two full days’ worth of gameplay. It is close to Factorio levels of addicting, not quite as intense but a feeling that I will keep playing it continuously even after I have technically beaten it. 

The gameplay in this game can be intense at one moment and next to impossible after you round a corner. It can be tedious and frustrating one second and action-packed the next. For me, it always felt rewarding but I know it will not be able to win over everyone. Keep in mind, I play on Normal difficulty too. A setting that should be right in the middle of a difficult challenge and a cakewalk. In my playtime, missions have spilled into both of those descriptions and not just as a melding of those elements but feeling as if the difficulty slider fell and rose into harder and easier categories. So unless you want to torture yourself, I really would not suggest a harder difficulty. I cannot assume the desperately of difficulty between cases.

The people, timing, evidence, and clues are all randomly generated. This lends the feeling of the game into a more realistic playstyle because some leads are dead ends. Not every piece of paper in your own house sheds light on high-value information, so why would it in a detective game? It also follows general rules that apply to realistic murders. Typically, the killer is someone close to the victim, and more often than not this managed to be true… but certainly not always.

As you walk the streets between the procedurally generated high rises, skyscrapers, hotels, diners, and factories, you can find jobs posted on noticeboards in the bars and restaurants on the ground floor. The noticeboards in apartments typically have fetch quests, which could entail finding a hat between floors 3-5 and such. The listings at the local eateries will offer more intriguing tasks, such as making arrests or gathering photographic evidence. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. Personally, I found that most of the time when I looked at these job boards, I would find at least one reward option better than the typical rewards I would get for a ‘main story’ murder. 

Murders seemingly occur at random. You could be enjoying a quick bite – keeping your character fed is an important mechanic – and suddenly during your meal, you will get a notice of a murder that has occurred over what sounds like your radio, near or far. It’s unclear what triggers the murder. It could be based on a time range scripted in after solving the previous case but for me, it seemed entirely random. At one point, it felt like only 3 minutes had passed between solving one crime before being assigned another. I spent maybe 30 minutes furnishing my apartment before another case opened. It’s important to arrive at the scene of the crime quickly if want to get ahead of the beat cops in the game called, ‘enforcers,’ break in and muck up your investigation before it even begins. 

Solving the cases is another animal entirely and where the issue with procedurally generated games becomes apparent. Dead-end evidence will occur, not everything you pick up is relevant, but it also means for this game you will not help yourself very much by searching things online. People might offer general occurances but the exact answer will require your expert sleuthing. That is a massive plus in my book. The steaks feel so much more real without knowing which answer or path is right until you have the evidence in hand. But this is not always easy, especially when evidence might have spawned in a difficult or near-impossible place or two items like a large note and a work ID card spawn in the same spot making one difficult to distinguish the smaller item. The curse of procedurally generated is almost always the spawning and pathfinding and while this game does an incredible job most of the time it can occur. Only once in my playthrough did this issue exist and I noticed the issue and was able to solve it, it happened to be one of the hardest cases I had, but not impossible. 

I managed to complete every case, I admit the second and third ones I had to load a save or two in order to get the right evidence lined up but that had more to do with my experience or lack thereof than the game’s mechanics. The logbook makes it much easier to manage the evidence you collect, not perfectly, but without it I do not see the game having any enjoyable aspect. That being said I did have to grab a pen and paper, in real life,  a few times to jot down notes during dialogue. This kind of feature might have an ability tied to it that records the last twenty or so pieces of dialogue your character has heard but I did not find such. It would be a welcomed edition. Especially when other games have included that feature before to offer some basic quality-of-life feature to an imperfect system; requiring the player to have a tape recorder in their inventory for instance would be an interesting way to allow for this feature while grounding itself in the realism the game does a good job of creating. 

The mechanics as a whole are unique and feel good, the differences here are positive to separate it from other games in the genre. There are guns and ammo in the world but you yourself cannot shoot, you can certainly eat lead as I did during my investigations, but dont expect to let off any return shots. Usually, I would complain about the unbalanced combat but here it lends itself appropriately to establishing the atmosphere of the game, you are a detective, not a gunslinger high on their own bravado.

Atmosphere: 2

You start in absolute squalor, in a basement apartment with one room and bugs constantly running across the floor of your dimly lit box. The world you exist in is filthy and dominated by corporate elites high above the mess of the city they rule over. At least this is the start of the prerendered tutorial area that I would imagine most people continue to play on. Personally, the second I solved the first murder I immediately backed out to make a map at the maximum size. I think it was about 5 x 5 city blocks. And before you ask you can specify the names of the buildings, the types, and the streets in a general overlay. I personally maintained the same number of building types the random generation made in its first iteration and simply moved them. Looking into it there is a difference between the type of business that may or may not occupy the bottom level so selecting one building type for an entire map is not advised as it would probably lead to a few mistakes while rendering. 

This game has the backdrop of a hyper-tension noir film with grit and dramatic lighting. A firm distinction between the elite and the general populace that is so low beneath them but so lacking in motivation to resist the social norms. It is the perfect scene for a lone wolf detective and once more you can decide how the world you play in is created so more pressure falls on you than the average game. 

The food mechanic also feels equally aesthetic as well as grounded in the gameplay. Let me also add typically I despise this type of mechanic. You gain certain status buffs when you hydrate and satiate your hunger and also an organic chance to meet people outside of their work for intel but having to grab a quick coffee in between cases makes the movie come to life. There is not enough time to focus on the long-term health effects of cheap donuts and hotdogs while you chase down another purp!

The game is voxel-based and personally, I understand why this design was chosen from a technical standpoint. If you read my review of Cloudpunk you may already know this simple style can make a game easier to load and process more difficult light elements; easier especially as raytracing has become more and more popular. The amount of things to load into this game is insane. Each character has an entire list of technical questions that define them from fingerprints to work location and description. The list goes and and it exists for every single character you run across. Minimizing the necessary assets that need to be loaded makes sense. It also helps eliminate design elements not looking cohesive when there is almost no cohesion between perfect cubes that only contain one color.

The reason it is not my favorite style for this game is the need to use descriptions to locate suspects or people of interest. For every technical reason it makes sense but bumping the graphics up to something like PS2 quality would go a long way. It is a personal preference I immediately retract because the wider options for facial creation would probably have the models look absolutely wild compared to their current acceptable state. A difficult pill to swallow but entirely reasonable. It would just be nice to be able to actually spot a suspect rather than have to enter a menu to confirm their ID.

Story: 1

Procedurally generated does not mean the story has to be bad, if anything it will be the least random element of the game, but the story here is not bad just not noteworthy when I think it easily could have been. The overarching objective of the game is to retire to ‘the fields’, which is described as a retirement community: the blissful utopia for those who clocked in every day and saved enough scratch to make it out. 

You will come across the letters of those who knew someone who retired but stopped communicating shortly after their departure. It is a consistent and depressing reminder of the world around you but it stops there. Even when you do eventually retire, and fair warning spoilers ahead, nothing really happens. You fill out a sheet noting who will take your possessions when you leave and then nothing. The game ends and the camera pans out from a building saying you left. 

It does feel like there is something more. As if ‘The Fields’ is a classic dystopian element that is just a government program to remove the unproductive retirees under the guise of peaceful existence in nature or a type of Soylent Green scenario. Having a second area to discover anew, with more difficult and strict enemies would have been such a brilliant second chapter and it feels like a lost opportunity to find out the area actually is real but murder has managed to penetrate their most glorified goal in life. Thus calling you out of retirement. The atmosphere is the saving grace of the story that makes what could easily be seen as lazy feel like deep care to create an interesting world for the player but the completion of the story only offers a rushed feeling to have a conclusion for the game rather than a fully developed narrative.

Duration: 2

The game feels endless, in the best way. Each crime or side objective lets the player put their detective hat on any way they please. It did take me a while to officially beat one story playthrough but I will admit I deleted my initial save – twice – and was probably more thorough than I needed to be in solving most of my cases. 

Value: 2

Shadows of Doubt is typically priced around $24.99 on Steam but fluctuates down by about 20% every other month. It’s hard to say what this trend will look like since the game has been early access up until only a few weeks ago. I would say the normal price is an absolute steal. This game has longevity for sure with each case being different and the ability to create your own city to investigate. It seems to also have a healthy modding community so the possibilities feel endless. I cannot recommend this game enough even without a perfect score. 

Total Score: 8/10

With the amount of praise I give this game it might feel somewhat surprising that it only hits an 8. Certainly a high score but our rating system is designed to remove bias so the score remains as impartial as possible. If we did not have it I would certainly give it a 10 but that would not be honest and would do a disservice for those interested in purchasing it. The people who worked on this game are truly champions in their field. The game is incredibly unique and is a near-flawless performance. Near flawless. There are certainly a few kinks that need to be ironed out and I hope the developers stick with it to see it earn a perfect score especially with it being so close but many a time a Steam early access game withered into the unknown after getting more funding from an official launch. The game mechanics alone I could continue to talk about because of how unique they are but I would not want to spoil the game for others because a lot of fun comes from discovery. You can expect more content about this game from us because it deserves a lot of praise and with the amount of effort they put into it I do not believe it will be a dud.