Shadows of Doubt 2023 detective game

Shadows of Doubt (2023, United Kingdom)

detective games

Shadows of Doubt is an open-world detective game with a first-person perspective. As a private investigator you are given procedurally generated cases around the city (well, part of the city), which might vary from murders to vandalism. You have variety of tools to help you on the way - from something as simple as phone directories to special equipment that will allow you to pick the locks or disable electronic surveillance.

You can gather pieces of evidence, like CCTV recordings, fingerprints, documents that you will find, not to mention you can pretty much break into any apartment in the given area. And because all of this is randomly generated, you can stumble upon people wandering in the streets, stay at homes, sit in the restaurants, with habits assigned to each of them.

Shadows of Doubt is in early access now, which explains the fact that some of the mechanics are still a bit clunky, some of them may not let you finish the case in hand, but overall it is something new - an open-world puzzle game. It is a mixed of detective gameplay, some stealth, some fight elements, a lot of digging in places, where you should not dig, like someone’s drawers or backroom of a business. Some of those elements work well, some of them are a bit wonky, but overall it is a project with a lot of potential.

Of course, since it is an early access, some of the procedurally generated elements may fail (sometimes in a way that you won’t be able to finish your job), but still the scale of the project is impressive. Once the mechanics will work properly it could be a very interesting detective game.

Shadows of Doubt videos