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[Kagus]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/986130/Shadows_of_Doubt/



It was just before dawn when I heard the familiar click and static of my bootleg enforcer radio picking up the signal of another terrible advancement in my livelihood. Male, late thirties, found in his apartment with a parting note scrawled on the wall in the victim's blood: "Put a pin in it". I mulled over the implications of that message as my own pins and needles burrowed greedily into my brain, the taste of yesterday's synth-whiskey still a little too fresh in my mouth. Putting on my coat, I stepped out onto the chilly streets of New Boston as the skies opened up with their first warning shots of rain. Whoever this poor bastard had been, it looked like someone upstairs was already weeping for him...


Shadows of Doubt is a procedural cyber-noir sandbox immersive sim, where you take on the role of a private investigator living in an urban center set in the dystopian corpo future of 1979. With the privately-owned police force being unequipped and uninterested in handling crimes that don't affect their shareholders, it's up to you to get to the bottom of these killings and try to bring some justice into a world that seems intent on forgetting what that looks like.

Explore a procedurally-generated city where hundreds of simulated citizens live out their lives and go through daily routines where they work, sleep, go to diners or just spend some quiet time at home with a beer and some TV.

Hunt down a variety of killers that have different methods, targets and calling cards using the best tools available to you, including: A fingerprint scanner, a very flexible interpretation of "trespassing", and an endless supply of yarn and thumbtacks that will be invaluable in helping you piece the case together.

Track down leads by tracing phone calls, questioning passersby, hacking into CCTV footage, and checking sales ledgers of weapons dealers (and much more!) to narrow down whodunnit and put them behind bars.

Work your way through murder cases to earn cash and social credit, or take on some less-than-legal side jobs for the local citizenry to pad your pockets even more and set your sights on one of the spacious Echelon apartments up in the top floors of the residential blocks. You know, the ones that don't have so many cockroaches already living in them... Who knows, maybe one day you'll earn enough social standing to get yourself an invitation to the illustrious retirement suburbs known as The Fields!


So, yeah. Pitch aside, I picked this thing up last week and have been enthralled both by the very enjoyable current state, as well as the absolutely staggering potential of this little project. It's still very much an early access title, so evidence that would have been very helpful will occasionally spawn inside of other objects/walls, the door numbers in some buildings will sometimes be written the wrong way around, and you'll sometimes trip and fall through a crack in the sidewalk into the infinite void beneath... Also, performance is generally not that super, at least on larger map sizes where it's trying to process the day-to-day of 6-700+ individual NPCs. Still though, considering what it's actually doing behind the scenes... I'm amazed it runs as well as it does.

The game is pretty much fully procedural. Map generation will create a city with random layouts, building/business names, citizens... And some of those citizens hide a deadly secret. Is it a furious coworker, an obsessed stalker, or perhaps a deranged madman intent on snuffing out the younger generation? It's up to you to find out based on the clues they leave behind, and there are a number of ways to go about interpreting and uncovering those clues.

And if a particular murder case has you absolutely stonewall stumped, don't worry! With no one to stop them, they'll go mad from their first taste of blood and keep slaughtering citizens until they're finally caught... Maybe they'll slip up and leave more clues at the next crime scene!


The game also features some basic survival mechanics in the form of keeping yourself fed and watered enough that you'll bounce back after having your teeth punched in by an uncooperative suspect. Upgrade your character via techno-genetic sync disks which provide permanent (until uninstalled) boosts to a variety of stats and abilities, allowing you to do things like keep security systems down for longer when you knock out their secure circuit, or negating fall damage, or even getting a little monetary deposit into your account every time you suggest to a witness that they should grab a refreshingly fizzy can of Starch-Kola™ you corporate shill! Heck, there's even a disk that lets you change the height of your character, either up or down. At max height you can just reach up to mess with security cams or air vents on the ceiling without having to bring your steppy-stool out, but this comes with the downside of needing to duck every time you walk through a doorway...

There's currently a somewhat limited variety of killers, and once you properly get into the swing of things solving cases gets pretty easy with the tools and allowances available. But it's a dedicated and talented team working on the project, and it's clear that they have bright and exciting plans for the future.


The game comes with two modes: Dead of Night and Sandbox. Dead of Night starts the player out in a specially designed scenario that serves as a tutorial to introduce them to many of the game's mechanics and systems. Once that scenario is completed, the game just continues normally as a sandbox again. If you're keen on trying this thing out, I highly recommend going through the scenario even in its somewhat rough state... The pre-packaged map works fine for this, but so does any map you decide to generate afterwards (I recommend Medium or smaller for your first go). Also... Save often! It is, as mentioned, a bit rough around the edges at times, and the basement cockroaches aren't the only bugs you'll see.

I've really never encountered anything like this game before, and it's honestly a concept I never thought I'd see anyone put together... But it really, truly is a sleuthing sim sandbox, and with a bunch of Bladerunner-esque cybernoir oozing out of the seams to boot.

[Malus]

It's super cool conceptually, though I'm waiting on more mechanics before I jump back in. I solved around 4 murders using basically the same strategy of "find killer's prints at the murder scene, make an inference based on the 'clue', break into their workplace to get their file and fingerprints and tie it all together." Maybe I got lucky and there are some murder archetypes where the killer actually wears gloves, or maybe the devs will add that later when there are more ways to pin people down at crime scenes. The dialogue system in particular seems pretty placeholder-y -- I'd love to have actual interrogations, testimonies or alibis that you can cross reference, etc.
I do really like the simulation stuff. It's neat being faced with problems and being able to come up with solutions that the game doesn't explicitly spell out for you, e.g.,:

Spoiler: How do I investigate a crime scene if there's a police officer camping the spot? (click to show/hide)

Try dialing 911 nearby, which will draw the cop away for a little bit as he gets dispatched to investigate.

Some of the sidequests are pretty tricky and require some inventive solutions, too. Like I got one where I had to take a picture of a guy and all I got to go off was his partner's *first* name and the building he lived in. No physical description of the man himself, or even his name. The directory only lists people's first initial (and you can't easily sort by building) and camping the entrance and talking to everyone (or going through all 20+ floors and knocking on doors) would take hours. Solution?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Realize that his partner's first name, "Kim", might be Korean, so you can search the directory for names that look Korean and have K. as their initial. Then narrow *those* down to the individuals living at that particular building, of which there should be only one or two. Then you can break into their homes looking for ID, or if they're home, just ask them their name. I got lucky and the partner literally came home as I was talking to Kim, so I snapped a picture (which draws aggro) and then sprinted to the mission dropoff point.

[Kagus]

There are also other, even faster ways for solving both those spoilers And that's what's great about it! I'd never even thought to use either of those tactics, so I went about solving things in my own way.

No gloves as of yet, but there are certain killer archetypes which are far less open about what sort of relationship they have to the victim, if they have one at all. Most of them will also leave some pretty telling clues, except for the one which is probably the hardest nut to crack currently.

That said, in general the murder cases are pretty straightforward once you've got a handle of the game's systems. The side jobs are definitely where the real challenge lies right now.


As far as testimonies and alibis are concerned, the next major update titled "Liars and Cheats" is set to drop some time next month and should provide a few more fun dimensions to the investigation process (and, hopefully, tweak the fact that if you ask the murderer if they know the victim, they'll offhandedly comment that they'd last seen them at the scene of the murder during the time of death). But yeah, the conversation mechanics are a bit bare-bones for now.

But yeah, I've had side jobs I just had to put on the back burner because trying to crack them directly would've been insane. I was supposed to find and arrest someone who had a skinny frame, long black hair, and were employed by "None". Only real identifying factor beyond that was that they had O- blood type.

After cracking open several CCTV installations around town and tracking down the homeless camps, I had burned through 7 prospects with none of them being the suspect. It was starting to look like the worst: I was tracking someone unemployed in an apartment.

Folks who are unemployed in an apartment will very rarely and sporadically venture out of their dens, making most methods of finding them useless. I'd run through every apartment resident list I could get my hands on, but not only are those lists incomplete but several of the buildings in my city simply didn't have them.

But then I was tracking another job; someone with blue eyes and a beard, and I'd picked up a potential lead via CCTV. Taking a still from the footage, I started asking around town for anyone who'd seen him. Several people mentioned a particular residential block, so I went there and started canvassing.

I was partway through one of the floors when a woman answered the door. I asked if she'd seen the man in the photograph, she said no... But before turning away, on a whim I decided to take a closer look at her. "Skinny", "Long black hair". Hmmm... I also had a sync disk upgrade that let me automatically access certain personal details of people on sight such as their salaries, and hers was coming up as a big fat "0". I asked her if I might step inside for a bit, and thanks to another upgrade giving me enhanced charisma she acquiesced and let me snoop around.

Heading straight for the bedroom, I found her husband lying in bed and snoring away... If I'd been a little bit earlier, or if he'd been a little bit slower in getting to bed, he might've been the one to answer the door instead of her and I would've been none the wiser. I cracked open their personal files, found her birth certificate... And there it was: Blood type O-. I'd found my perp.

Identified, handcuffed, and turned in to city hall for processing. Finally got to put that case behind me after several days ingame.

[nenjin]

Intrigued. I may have to pick this up.

[Kagus]

A new city, a new start... And an old feeling of dread. Jackson Varner breathed in that familiar sensation, soaking in the instinctual hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck prickle that death was in the air, like the electric tension before a storm.

He looked around the apartment that had become his foothold in this strange and troubled district of New Sherbrooke; at the empty address book, the empty wardrobe, the number cruncher that held all the grizzly details of his empty bank account... Melissa would've said those blank spaces were "fresh" and "inspiring", ever the optimist. But now the spot where Melissa should have been was empty too, and Jackson had never been any good at paying attention to the life lessons she was so casually able to teach.

But while the lack of her easy laughter in the apartment was a weight all its own, the lack of hard cash in his wallet was a more urgent concern. If his hunch was right and there was murder afoot, he was going to need some funds to get the tools, and the cooperation, for his investigation. Greasing a few palms with "Bureaucratic lubricant" could get you into the good graces, and even the properties, of a great number of upstanding citizens.

Glancing at one of the large "Dragon Dog" posters he'd tacked to the wall (See, Lissa? I decorated), he ventured out of the relative comfort of 201 Hansen Towers and out into the chilly night air.

He needed credits, fast, and preferably without any details he needed to worry about immediately. A quick visit to Ferret Cantina across the street and a browse through their payphone's city directory gave him what he was looking for: A vague listing for a business euphemistically named "Stork Company", which promised to deliver you the paycheck you're expecting. Operating out of an alley extension, this "payday security" organization had that uniquely fishy smell of loan shark.

The curly golden locks of the purveyor seemed out of place on the stern, solidly-built woman. She gave off a particularly striking aroma that inferred a previous career in pest control... Specifically, a position as the fumigation chemicals.

She smiled a shark's grin. "You need money? We got ya covered honey, no muss no fuss. We give you 2,000 crows today, you pay us back in a week. Nothing simpler". The grin widened, "We'll take care of the interest calculations, sugar".

It was dirty money, and he knew it was carrying a lot more baggage than the shark lady would ever let on... But it would have to do.


He returned to the brisk stillness of the night air just in time to hear it split by the crackle of the enforcer radio in his pocket: "All units. Body reported at 1001 Anderson Terrace. Suspected homicide".

"Damn", Varner muttered under his breath, "Looks like I was right."

[askovdk]

I picked it up yesterday and have only solved a second murder case for now, but I love the potential.

I was triggered by this excellent (and very long) playthrough by the youtuber "Insym" :
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhO3J4aB-4mi1uLpYW5y27ZZrMSvq7n7U

[Kagus]

Jackson Varner rushed to Anderson Terrace, and was met by the commotion of enforcers attempting to clear the scene and disperse the remaining rubberneckers. It seemed they'd already finished their "Investigation", and had moved on to the important business of intimidating the other residents into a false sense of safety.

Waiting for an apathetic guard to look away, Varner slipped past the crime scene tape and began looking through the apartment.

It didn't take long to find what he was looking for. Huddled in a corner of the kitchen was the broken body of what had--presumably--once been the resident of this fashionably modern apartment. Judging from the color of the blood and body and the latter's rigidity, she'd clearly been resigned to her current position for the last couple hours. However, it soon became clear that this was no random drug-fueled assault... The victim's ID marked her as Fen Qin, the head of HR at a local accounting firm called Petal Clerical; but the stockpiles of ammunition and weapon mods hidden in and around the study painted an entirely different picture.

A silenced Lazarus 8mm lay casually askew on the kitchen counter, unfired. Only prints on it were the victim's. This had been her gun, and she hadn't seen a need to use it until it was too late... She had been at ease, unthreatened by her late-night caller until it was too late. She must have known her assailant, welcomed them in, given them an inch... And they had taken her life.

The first blow had probably dazed her long enough for the perp to land the second, and third, and however many more as she lay battered and bleeding on the ground. Impacts looked like they'd used a hammer or some other blunt object. It was brutal, personal.

A small card had been delicately stood on edge, propped up against the still and lifeless body. "DIDN'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES", the card proclaimed in bold typeface, "THEY MUST BE WORTHY". Varner's scanned picked up a single fingerprint, almost tauntingly positioned on the front of the card... A print that very clearly did not belong to the dead woman laying on her linoleum deathbed.


Varner scanned the rest of the kitchen, while helping himself to some of the tins of food stocked in the shelves... After all, investigation is a lot harder on an empty stomach, and it wasn't as if a can of synthbeans was going to be doing the late lady of the house much good at this point. While munching on a cold can of "Eugenia's Best!" (what exactly this "Best" actually was happened to be the subject of some debate among consumers, with a popular conclusion being "Best if you don't know"), he spotted a bloody bootprint amidst the jumble. Given that Jack had been late to the scene, it was probably just the leavings of one of the city's finest carelessly tramping around the scene... Still, it was worth noting. Size 11, clearly overshadowing Fen Qin's size 9 footwear.

Jackson made his way back out of the apartment, expertly concealing his exit behind a silent cloak of the guard's apathy.

Making his way down to the management office on the 4th floor, Varner scanned for footage around the estimated time of the killing... A timespan that was all-too-conveniently vacant in the system's records. This was clearly someone who knew to cover their tracks.

It seemed the only thing left was to look in on this Fen Qin character herself, and the mysterious Petal Clerical she had worked for...



In other, actual news the lead dev is back from his time off and alongside the rest of the team has opened up an experimental branch on Steam, with a fresh update in that branch aimed at patching up some memory issues and overall improving the performance of the game. You can opt in to the branch via the Beta options menu.

[Vivalas]

Great game! I found it a bit stale and same-y after 20-30 hours or so, but that's because I loved it so much I binged it nonstop and finished and entire city in like 3-4 sittings. The bones are there and if they just keep working on making the procedural gen pop a bit more, I think that can be fixed.

I, personally would like guns and permadeath, but that's just me. Mods will probably add guns eventually. The tutorial case has such suspense to it but that goes away once you realize in none of the cases can the murderer actually try to target you out of retribution or something. I think with some sort of retaliation and maybe some organized crime stuff this will probably be the definitive noir/detective game.

Thanks for making a post, too, I wanted to but was a bit lazy.

[Kagus]

Well there's a major update in the works with a planned release date of sometime this month, so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Should hopefully add a bit more depth to the investigative process with the invention of lying!

I've logged over 80 hours so far, but that's just me. Yeah, most of the murders are pretty same-y and a easy at this point, but the side jobs can still force some lateral thinking on occasion, and every now and then you get a murder where half the evidence has glitched out, which ironically makes things a lot more interesting to figure out...   I also just really enjoy getting to know the city, and learning how the underlying mechanics work (and don't work).


As for guns... Eh. Like, I can get the appeal. The hardboiled noir detective pulling out his trusty piece to fend off some of the local mob's goons, or to catch out the fleeing 7th Street Slasher who's been terrorizing the city for weeks and finally put their reign of terror to an end... I also see how having gun items and ammunition items readily available, even purchasable, indicates that it should be possible to use them together. Especially in an immersive sim.

That said, I do still respect the design decision of not putting that kind of weaponry in the hands of the player. I also respect the fact that it apparently breaks the simulation itself apart into itty bitty pieces. As it currently stands, I'm firmly on the side of leaving that alone and focusing on building up the rest of the game instead. Like you say, mods will almost certainly figure out their own way of adding them in at some point anyway.


As far as permadeath is concerned, that's a funky one. The game does currently lack a lot in the way of consequences, and I feel like it could definitely do with more... But I'm not sure permadeath is really the right path for that. I really rather like "learning" a city, getting familiar with it... And permadeath would mean all of that gets risked on top of the comparatively minor loss of your personal progression (which I suppose would be... Sync upgrades?).

Personally, I'm of the opinion that loss of opportunity and loss of property can sting plenty enough to serve as a valid threat. Let cases go cold, the killer forever a mystery gnawing at the back of your mind (preferably alongside the ability to properly archive our cases, so we can go digging them up again in a fevered obsession). Let our stuff get stolen, our apartments foreclosed upon, that sort of thing.

It keeps you in the game, and in the city you've come to familiarize yourself with, while still threatening (and removing) your progression within that city. Plus, it can potentially give you motive for revenge! And that's always good fun, especially in something as sandboxy as this where we have the opportunity to be creatively nasty to whatever ends up slighting us.

[nenjin]

I feel like procedurally generating different types of murderers and making them aware of how close you are to discovering them should lead to some emergent gameplay. Some aggressive psychos will try to kill you when you get to close, while an arch-mastermind will find other ways to foil you.

But yeah. The detective getting ambushed by their quarry is such a staple of the genre it seems like it has to be there in some form, at some point.

[sofanthiel]

There are already psychos trying to kill you, except the psychos are regular citizens with shotguns and the reason is you accidentally pulling a security alarm!

[Vivalas]

Optional permadeath, of course, I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. Maybe it's also just my current reaction to the lack of consequences, as you mention, but I was thinking about it and permadeath would solve a lot of the issue I have with it, anyhow. But I guess I can already just do permadeath myself anyways, doesn't really need to be coded.

It's just that, like, I think I literally had one death during my entire first run. Granted that was on normal difficultly, but I've heard the same from extreme difficulty players. Balance is always gonna be skewed this early on anyways, so it's probably not that big of a deal.

And as for guns yeah, it's just a genre thing to me. My first basement apartment I put a shotgun and a revolver on my glass table for decoration and it just embodied the feel so well. The game is incredibly immersive. I can sit in the diner and just drink Gemsteaders and be happy. But the issue with immersion in sims like these is I always want more, I guess. Hand on my trenchcoat pocket on my trusty snub .38 as I knock on the murderer's door. It's just such a pivotal part of the feel, but I respect the balls of making a noir game where the player can't use guns.

Excited to see where it goes, I think they said something about releasing the first update in June?

[Bumber]

I watched Let's Game It Out play it. Knock on door, wait for civilian to reach door, bust door down into their face, then steal their stuff. Truly the way the game was meant to be played.

[Kagus]

It's just that, like, I think I literally had one death during my entire first run. Granted that was on normal difficultly, but I've heard the same from extreme difficulty players. Balance is always gonna be skewed this early on anyways, so it's probably not that big of a deal.

Yeah, damage on Extreme (which is the only thing the difficulty levels currently affect) is pretty gnarly. Someone pulls out a shotgun and you're one-tapped. Rifles will also mow you down in fairly short order. The other stuff is more survivable, naturally, but you're still not going to want to stick around in any fight-like situation for very long, as things can go from bad to dead on a hilariously short timeline.

Excited to see where it goes, I think they said something about releasing the first update in June?

Yup! Next major point on the roadmap is the "Cheats and Liars" update, which is slated for Q2. And since this is the last month of Q2, that basically means it's either coming out in June or they're gonna miss their proposed deadline and bring dishonor upon their cow

The main items listed for this update are a new side job, a new building, and new NPC interactions.


Mind, Cole's also set out an intention to get the game 1.0'd and out of Early Access in four months (six months from April), sooooo... Yeah, I dunno if his time frames are the most realistic.

I watched Let's Game It Out play it. Knock on door, wait for civilian to reach door, bust door down into their face, then steal their stuff. Truly the way the game was meant to be played.

It's terribly effective at times! Especially with the sync upgrade that makes them stay knocked out for (potentially more than) twice as long. Only real downside is that when they do wake up, they will run to trigger a full building alert which will make all the security systems aggro on you as soon as you enter the building. And those alerts can sometimes take a while to cool off again.

[Vivalas]

I watched Let's Game It Out play it. Knock on door, wait for civilian to reach door, bust door down into their face, then steal their stuff. Truly the way the game was meant to be played.

It's terribly effective at times! Especially with the sync upgrade that makes them stay knocked out for (potentially more than) twice as long. Only real downside is that when they do wake up, they will run to trigger a full building alert which will make all the security systems aggro on you as soon as you enter the building. And those alerts can sometimes take a while to cool off again.

Door busting is the most incredibly powerful thing at the moment. It's basically the entire combat meta. I can wipe entire enforcer squads so long as they are all bunched up outside the door.