As it stands, Shadows of Doubt is.. a neat creation, a neat starting point, but ultimately lacks depth or intrigue.

Every case is just going to be what you see on the surface. Someone felt they weren't getting paid enough, murdered their boss. The fliers in their house mention a radical group, but that radical group is just a tickbox on their character sheet, it's not real. No one is getting framed for anything or blackmailed. If someone tries to knife you on the street you can't report them for a crime, and if you try to arrest a criminal on the street: you just messed with one of the people of New York City so everyone wants a piece of you. At least until you're out of sight, then all your international war crimes are forgiven.

Information will often be coincidental. You can get asked for some cases simply to find 'brown haired, brown eyed' as a suspect - which occasionally will magically fill itself in with someone's name when you come across them. Casework becomes.. a repetitive slog. It's your dayjob.

I did enjoy some of my time with Shadows of Doubt, it has some good aesthetic and premise, but it feels like something that.. would be in the background of Deus Ex or GTA or something, rather than the solo feature. At least as it stands. Even just creating a good dozen cases and an overall narrative to go with would make a solid sell. Which kind of defeats the purpose of procedural generation, no?

Still, I do very much appreciate the effort put in, and that Shadows of Doubt exists in general. It is an avenue worth exploring even if it does not always bear fruit at the end.

A fantastic sci-fi noir experience with a neat art-style and incredibly strong base for emergent gameplay. Even though the cases are procedurally generated, each one ends up feeling like an actual story thanks to great freedom and game loop design.

Performance is pretty weak for now with obvious loading stutters and general low framerates in open areas but that's to be expected of an Early Access title with such a small team working on it.

Its a really cool game about you being a private investigator theres not much more to say but I saw other people write down their first case and found it charming so heres mine, *clears throat and talk in raspy old school detective voice*:

>Disclaimer: First game, no prior knowledge and no videos watched.<

[Part 1]
Woke up in my apartment, was I a detective, ex police or just a citizen trying to do some damn good in this forsaken city? I dont know. I cant remember and everytime Im close to finding some answers, my mind gets wiped blank with each lighting strike in between heavy rain hitting my apartment windows like fury water hits a damn ships bow in a storm. Whoever I might have been the day before, I am a private investigator now and I need my first real case. First step, get my feet out of bed. I turned on the night lamp and looked into an unfamiliar, cold room. With the storm raging outside, the cold feeling of the apartment and my blank mind I felt like in a horror movie. If all that wasnt enough soon after, my phone rang, dead in the night, mustve been four in the morning, I was greeted by a person only with soft yet shaky breathing, just slow breathing, right out a horror novel. After they hung up the phone I called back the last caller yet to no avail. I wrote down the number and proceeded to investigate my apartment. More precicely I took stock of my kitchen supplies, synthetic meat, synthetic milk, some wrapped candy laying about, great, but then, my eyes caught a burgundy wine standing like a loyal soldier in one of my cabinets. Like a puppet on strings someone else decided my faith and I downed half the bottle as if my life depended on it. Was this the reason I woke up with no clue as to who I was before? It proved to be a horrible short term decision and with the taste of wine escaping my stomache, the toilet agreed.

After a quick reviving shower and much needed pain killers I got out of the bathroom just to see a mysterious note infront of my entrance door, someone mustve pushed in underneath it, only saying three words:

"Find Önni Jonson" - hastly written on crumbly paper.

Ive proceeded to look through the city's phone book and got a match on the name along with Önnis adress, great, I smelled a case and with that I got myself my first lead.

Arriving at Önnis place he did not answer my ever so slightly louder getting knocks on his door, that could eventually wake the neighbors, so I had to get in by myself. However it proved none too difficult getting into the place as I brought enough lockpicks to pick myself straight into the vaults of fort knox itself. I searched the apartment and soon enough found and lost my only lead, Önnis was dead, possibly murdered. After checking his body, sure enough, I found out he was shot by a low caliber pistol and with that we got ourselfs a murder.


>The case was too long for Steam so, already having it written, I decided to make a full post for it wich you can find here if you are interested:< https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982682116