Kind of feels like a sidequest category in Daggerfall masquerading as a self-contained videogame. It's a mystery simulator without any real NPC design, and the absence of that element can only really produce hidden object puzzles strung together with some rudimentary lead-chasing. Cases follow a pretty rote pattern and without much in the way of motive or supporting characters there's not much opportunity for emergent story. Kind of represents the worst of algorithm-based game design, shuffling around a series of prefab parts that completely fail to surprise or cohere.

A unexpectedly lovely gem of an early access game

Keeping in mind its early access, it will occasionally have a few bugs here and there, but they have never detered me or rendered the game unplayable.

It's a refreshing take on the detective genre that keeps on giving you that hit of adrenaline from solving a case, no matter if its an 5 minute case or one that can last hours with an expansive case board.

I can't wait to see it be expanded on as it gets updates and see how expansive the procedurally generated worlds can become and the new case types that will be added; especially with the added creativity of the community due to mod support being added very soon

A really great idea, but lacking in execution. Apart from the sheer quantity of bugs the game has (it's currently in alpha), the murder investigations are extremely straightforward. There is no suspects list, no motive or nothing like other detective games, you just find some fingerprints, find some more in the workplace of the victim and you can find the culprit that way.
The side jobs can be interesting, but because they ask you to trail someone and pretty often will give you very irrelevant info, it's more of a gambling game until you get one where they tell you their workplace or something useful to identify them.
Overall, I was surprised to see how many different mechanics the game use and getting in and out of places feels fun, but I feel like the game tries to do too much and falls short. Maybe with the next years of development it gets better, but right now it can be pretty underwhelming.

This game does something that I've always dreamed about, and it does it really well.

You get to play as a detective in a city where each case is different from the other. You are given absolute freedom on what to do; the scale is enormous, even though the city itself is not so big, but it is procedural generated, so every person has their own identity, routine, dialogues, which means that every city will feel different. I don't really know why, but when you analyze a specific scene and see fingerprints from another person, it gives such a feeling of scale that no other detective game ever did.

It makes you actually feel like a detective, which is very hard to do in a game. There are no pointers nor any objective markers. You find your own clues, add them to the detective board and find connections that may lead to some progress (or sometimes to a dead end!). It's such a cool feeling because the whole city, every building, shop, apartament is yours to explore.

A lot of times you end up doing illegal things like breaking in to someones home, or going to restricted places. The stealth mechanics are very important, and I can tell you that they are indeed pretty good. The stealth itself is quite forgiving (in a good way). It made me remember dishonored stealth, which is always a good thing.

The performance, unfortunately, is one of the major downsides. This is an early access game after all, so I didn't expect smooth fps, but the lack of customizable graphics settings is unfortunate. I have a rx5700 and I get around 40fps, with dips to mid 30s on 1440p. I rarely play games on lower fps than 60, but this game is so good I just couldn't stop playing because of some performance issues. The game itself runs smoothly, no stutters, only low fps. But don't make this a turnoff, the game is really worth buying. I'm sure this will get adressed pretty soon.



tl;dr this game has so much potential, you feel like an actual detective, please support the developer!

The best part of this game is that you can pick up any random office chair and hurl it at random citizens to instantly crumple them with zero consequences, which comes in useful during stealth, when you're being chased, when you're dealing with witnesses to the other chair-assaults you've committed, when you can't really figure out what to do next, and most of all it comes in useful when the game entirely breaks and locks you out of completing a mission so you have nothing else to do anyways.

Wait, this is a detective game? What the fuck?

The game is repetitive, and there is no reason to sneak around when you can instantly knock people out by slamming doors in their faces, and hack security systems to shoot everyone for you. When they are unconscious, you are free to take their fingerprints, which will let you solve most crimes pretty much immediately.

Due to being an Early Access title, the game can feel rather barebones and repetitive, and with the tactics listed above, it feels as though I have optimised the fun out of the game.

On another note, the side cases just feel unfair — someone with green eyes qnd blood type O+ lives in this 16-storey building, and I have to smash all of their windows? By the time I am done combing through sixteen floors, I shall have stolen thousands of crowns' worth of loot, doing my best Garrett impression. This game honestly feels more fun as a thief simulator than a detective simulator...

An incredibly promising immersive detective game, with randomly generated cities, characters, relationships, and crimes. You play as a private investigator of sorts, hired to solve (and sometimes commit) certain crimes. This is achieved by taking contracts from various boards in the city, which act as side quests to increase your reputation, and gain money. These contracts can range from needing to photograph items or characters and deliver those photos, or act out an arrest warrant for a police suspect as two examples. While this is going on, there will always be one active serial killer in the city, who dynamically plans and executes against their targets. You are notified when a murder is reported so you can scan a crime scene for information that may link back to the killer, but Shadows of Doubt finds clever ways to connect the killer to the victim, providing motives or evidence between subsequent murders. Sometimes obvious, or sometimes very well hidden, the killer's dynamic movements allow them to be tracked around the city to help you identify them. For example, they may be spotted purchasing the murder weapon, or recorded on a camera entering a victim's apartment. With more updates down the line, Shadows of Doubt is shaping up to be an exceptional stealth/puzzle hybrid.

Revisited this game as part of the addition of achievements to check it out since I initially tried it on launch.

Overall still a horridly optimized experience with the occasional NPC jank but at its core Shadows of Doubt is a genuine experience with a lot of intrigue and charm. I think the foundation is exceptionally well realized and I think it holds massive potential. Even since launch there's been a lot of updates that make the game generally feel more "alive" and interactive, and I hope the devs continue their good work. They're apparently pretty active on the game's discord and are very responsive to feedback and questions, so they get a big plus for that as well.

Overall it's a pretty enjoyable game that delivers exactly what's on the box, and not much more. Highly recommended experience casually - though whoever designed some of these achievements should probably be put in a psych ward (KO everyone in the city... Accomplished at what cost?).

incredibly, incredibly promising early access game. as it stands, the core gameplay loop is already incredibly solid. rummaging through files, searching through computers, scanning through cctv footage, gathering fingerprints, searching corpses, it's all stellar. the game posits itself as an "immersive-sim" (a term that has over time gradually lost all meaning if one were to look at the steam tag) and for being comprised purely of procedurally generated open worlds i think the game is already doing a stellar job of sticking to the thief/deus ex model of being filled with so many different interactable things within the environment (whether this be computers, file folders, notes, posters, photographs, etc.), the ability to tackle objectives in any way you want to, and having a large degree of freedom to how you want to interact with the various systems the game has put into place. non-player characters have schedules that they stick to allowing you to plot whether you want to break into their home to look for a murder weapon while they're at work, or barge through the door and surprise them while they are home for an arrest, or even sneak through a vent at their workplace to look through their computer while they're at home.

there's also the pinboard system of keeping track of each case you're working on, which at first can feel unwieldy but slowly reveals itself over time to be a great asset once you get the hang of actually using it. you're able to place pieces of evidence on it wherever you want, and some links between pieces will be made automatically based on what information is shared, but you're also able to add any connections you want. this allows for being able to plan you're investigation extremely effectively depending on how you want to tackle it, grouping objects together by location or individual and slowly checking every lead until you finally reach your culprit. there would be times when i didn't know what to do before realizing there was a piece on my pinboard i hadn't fully explored yet, tracking down a specific person, and finally being able to pull all the pieces together and catch the killer. you will legitimately feel yourself becoming a better detective as you play the game more, as you learn more tricks of the trade on your own and will be able to track people down based on smaller and smaller pools of evidence, and nothing will compare to agonizing over a case for hours before realizing something specific you can do and finally solve it.

i know i'm being a little vague with how exactly these systems work and what you can actually do in the game, and that's because i truly think it's best to try it for yourself and figure out what is best for you, but also because i feel that in it's current state there are modes of operating here that i feel like kind of go against the core ethos of what the game is trying to accomplish and that knowing this right off the bat will take some of the fun out of it, i just hope there will be some balancing changes coming in the future to make the game a little harder to exploit. the stealth system at the moment is kind of broken, while there's a lot of thrill to the actual sneaking aspects of the game and trying to break into places without getting caught, there's very little punishment for actually getting caught, as most fights just involve some janky hand to hand combat which can be too easy to actually win even against multiple combatants and fleeing from enemies is just exiting the building before they have no memory of what you've done.

there's also the various issues that come with this being a procedurally generated immersive sim (especially in early access). there's a distinct lack of pathos to a lot of the crimes and jobs. while there's a wealth of reading material in the game (emails, apartment leases, various sticky notes) you'll very rarely find something you haven't read before with the names swapped out which in turn makes investigating by looking for a motive completely impossible. this could be fixed in future updates by having more bespoke crime scenes, but as it stands this is game that is much more focused on systems than narrative with the player having to build that from scratch based purely on context. i also ran into a lot of generation bugs in the game: screens impossible to see due to a cabinet being placed right in front of them, rooms with way more doors than they need to have, vents being impossible to progress through due to strange geometry glitches, a building who's top half would not load at all, though i chalk this up mostly to early access and assume that most of this will be fixed as more patches roll out.

i still obviously have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this one so far, with twenty hours dropped in even in the early access state. the voxel based world is a joy to inhabit, with really strong art direction and environment design complemented well by the lighting a weather effects placed on them, and of course as i mentioned the actual main gameplay loop is incredibly addictive even if it's not yet as deep as it could be. incredibly promising and excited to see where this grows and evolves from here.

Picked up this game on the day the early alpha released and haven't regretted it in the slightest. An incredible experience in solving crimes and mysteries that I haven't seen in any other game. The only thing letting it down slightly is the current lack of content and after playing on the same map for a while crimes become a lot easier to solve, with knowledge of lots of citizens sometimes making the mystery solve itself.

Incredibly excited for the full release though, and the dedication that the devs have shown to fixing bugs and adding content makes the release of this something to look forward to.

Dicked around in this for two hours or so, and like, the premise is there. With some additional updates and bug fixes, it could be something really great. But I solved three cases and all of them were like "THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES! FOLLOW THE LEADS! IT COULD BE ANYONE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN CITY OF SIN!?" And I would always point to the one person referenced in the victim's address book and say I think its this dude, and the game would be like, uh, well yeah you're right... BUT WHY NOT GO THROUGH HIS BINS. Following leads is a neat idea and all, but everyone in my city acts like I'm trying to shoot them in the face if I ask any questions, and it seems you can solve a good 90% of the cases by getting fingerprints from the crime scene, getting fingerprints from the victim's best mate's house and then being like, yes, these match. You're off to jail, buddy.

Hardest part is figuring out how to look for clues when every NPC is sprinting through their house like a demon, switching their lights on and off and waking up and going to bed every two seconds in a ritual to summon Anubis. Let me skulk through your private life in peace my guy, jesus.

This game is if batman was a first person game and couldn’t beat people up very well. And also if everyone in gotham was really mean for no reason.very interesting and ambitious concept but has been executed beautifully. one of the very few fleshed out detective video games i’ve seen. the world building/concept is creative and refreshing, and the game creates with it an amazing atmosphere anywhere you go on the map. although still in early access this game is already incredibly promising and i look forward to it’s updates/full release.