Procedural detective game Shadows of Doubt coming this April

A noir story works because of believable, life-like characters, so a procedurally generated noir detective story seems pretty hard to make. However, Shadows of Doubt is exactly that, and it’s coming to Steam this April. Have a look at the Shadows of Doubt trailer here:

Procedural drama

Shadows of Doubt is an open-world stealth game where you play a detective in an alternate 1980s world. Being a noir story, the city is a den of corruption constantly drenched in rain and darkness. As a detective, your objective is to hunt down a serial killer haunting the metropolis. On the side, you can do side missions like collecting and brokering information for cash.

However, you need to keep a low profile as you peep into the lives of the citizens you encounter. No one is going to be happy to see you poking your nose into their business, and the cops are less than accommodating when you snoop around at crime scenes. You’ll need to sneak your way in and out of locations by picking locks or crawling through vents. Then you must use your gadgets to analyze the crime scene, collect evidence like CCTV footage and receipts, and put it all together on a corkboard to work out a conclusion.  

The city itself is Shadows of Doubt’s best feature. Being a first-person sandbox, you can visit any location, from seedy bars to hotel rooms to dank alleyways. You can also observe people going about their business: everyone has a name, a place to live, and a schedule they follow—a bit like Skyrim but on a much larger scale involving hundreds of NPCs. 

In their Steam blog, ColePowered Games had this to say about their Early Access release:

“Shadows of Doubt has been in development for many years, and so we didn’t take the decision to launch into Early Access lightly. Being open and transparent, we’ve had a lot of serious discussions about how and when to launch the game. The game is in a very advanced state of development - while there are plans for new content and further optimisations, the game is functionally complete with a full suite of features, cases, content and a complete Sandbox Mode, beyond what you may usually expect from an Early Access title. Both myself and the publisher are confident in the overall quality, breadth of content and playability of Shadows of Doubt’s Early Access release.”

Shadows of Doubt is coming to Early Access this April 24. True to the game’s ambitious nature, the developers plan to add progression systems, an even bigger city, and a way to customize your apartment. Pre-order a Shadows of Doubt PC key from our comparator today.