Shadows of Doubt
An immersive sandbox detective stealth game set in a fully simulated sci-fi noir city of crime and corruption. Think like a private investigator and take on jobs to earn cash on your path to catching a serial killer. If you don’t catch them - they will kill again…
Shadows of Doubt is a detective, immersive sim and noir game
developed by ColePowered Games
and published by Fireshine Games.
Released on September 26th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese.
It has received 14,317 reviews of which 12,184 were positive and 2,133 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 14.99€ on Steam and has a 40% discount.
The Steam community has classified Shadows of Doubt into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 or newer
- Processor: Intel 6th Gen i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 or Radeon 5500XT
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 4 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Approximate specs for 1080p, 30+ fps
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
1.0 Update Review TLDR: Extremely disappointing 1.0 but is worth the price tag for the 20-30 hours of fun you will have. For the big 1.0 update that advertised 'brand new features' alongside kidnapping and 'new killer interactions' (we got one), being able to drag a ragdoll isn't a revolutionary feature. Seriously? Is that it? I am incredibly disappointed at this. It's not a finished game by any means. Where's the, ya know, actual PI work? Taking photos of cheating spouses?* Investigating potential fraud for a company? Bounties? Corporate Misconduct? Trailing someone?** Finding someone that doesn't want to be found or helping delete records? Where are the stakeouts, gambling dens, and organised crime that noir is known for? *The cheating job is you going into their emails, finding out who their partner is cheating with, and calling it a day (you can break their windows, and take a photo of that person as an optional task). You do NOT tail them or catch them in the act. It is the same gameplay as nearly every other job/case. **There is a specific job that asks you to tail someone and steal a briefcase after a meeting. It isn't a game mechanic outside of a janky job. It is never involved in your cases. How to find a typical killer before they commit the crime: They sprint around like a maniac to their target. On top of this, you are the only person in the city that decided to be a detective. Not a single other PI exists. Imagine having a rival on the same case, or being investigated/stalked for barking up the wrong tree? Annoy the wrong corporation and have a black hand on your door. The city has a superficial amount of life to it. On the surface, people do their jobs, sometimes have social meetings set for them, and kill. Underneath that, there is no variety. Knock someone out? They get up and act like nothing happened. A tiny TV show is more of a priority than expanding the game's depth. I could go on but I'm already ranting too much. Overall, this is not a 1.0 game. Why recommend the game? Because it's fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed Shadows of Doubt knowing that it was an incomplete game. The potential and vision is there, and there's nothing else like it. I have quite literally dreamed about this type of game for a decade (the pirate game dream is dead). Sometimes, the game hits you with a near-unsolvable case, as the killer mocks you. It's peak procedural gaming that rivals the storyteller model of Rimworld. What is there is extremely good, there just isn't enough. Focusing on pre-made cities is not it, unless you can prove that they will be exceptionally high quality. The genemods change the way you play, the jobs you do are mostly fun, sneaking through call logs makes me feel like a detective, etc. the game is just plain good and one of (and might be the only) best games in the genre. Good game, disappointing updates, very incomplete.
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This game has the unique ability to make me feel like I truly accomplished something. The unscripted, procedurally generated, cases have to be solved dynamically; this makes for an extremely rewarding game loop. This game has no audible voices, no sense of self, as you hardly know anything about the main character, yet somehow it is one of the most immersive titles I've ever played. Let me explain, to the best of my ability why that is: In a nut shell, the world exists. I could stop there, but I'll elaborate. The world exists...apart from you. What I mean by that is, that the world, it's denizens, and their personal lives, all exist apart from you. For example, Brenda may live on the 11th floor of the building across the street from yours. She has an identity. She has a last name, fingerprints, a shoe size, a husband, a job, an inappropriate romantic relationship wit her co-worker. A phone number. She makes 48k a year, and was recently denied a raise. She frequents a Chinese restaurant a couple blocks from her house. She has migraines and is a meat lover. This is all stuff that is true of her, and might not be true of anyone else. But the reason you're sneaking around her apartment collecting all of this data is because she sent an email to someone a few days ago, an angry email, threatening violence. She doesn't seem the likeliest of suspects, her shoe size doesn't match for instance, the perpetrator was a large size 13, and the victim was killed in a gruesome way, the body encircled by a bloody, demonic, pentagram, but it's the only lead you got. That is, until you discover a human skull in the end table near her bed, and next to it, a pair of men's shoes...size 13. Her husband's...Still that's not enough to go by. You quickly pull his full name off the lease papers they keep in their closet. Alfred Bennis. His business work schedule is pinned to the fridge. It appears Alfred works at Johnson Enterprises. You decide to go to her husbands work place at night time to rummage through the employee records. You find Alfred's file, his finger prints, and a nice clear portrait of his face. You wonder if any of the victim's next door neighbors would recognizes him. Now that you have a picture you head back to the scene of the crime and knock on the door across the hall. An old woman answers, she comes across as a tight lipped lady who doesn't want to put her nose in other peoples business, but you insist, adding with your inquiry a few credits to persuade her to take a look at the picture. She confirms that she saw the man in the picture leave the apartment in a hurry, around 8pm.... An inspection of the victim's body had indicated an estimated time of death at between 7:40pm and 9pm. BINGO! You have a suspect who was spotted at the scene of the crime, who wears size 13 boots, and is affiliated with the victim through his wife. Now, you could keep gathering evidence just to be absolutely sure. Hack into his emails, rummage through his locker at his work to see if you can find the murder weapon, see if you can find footage from street cameras that shows him stalking the victim. Should you submit your case resolution, and find that you were WRONG...well, then you must have missed something. Were the size 13 boots even relevant? Didn't a cop with big feet go tromping through your crime scene before you got there? Did you ever check the trash at the victim's apartment for any evidence. Well, maybe, you'll get a second chance to catch the murderer after he kills next victim.... And next time, you'll be ready. All of those personal details, connections, and forensic findings not only make the world more believable and immersive, it makes the cases more difficult to solve; you aren't fed leads that prompt pre-written dialogue, you don't have shining clues conspicuously glimmering on the bed. You have a massive haystack of data to comb through with your own deductive reasoning and an absolutely ingenious little evidence board to map out your connections and visualize your logic. THE CASE BOARD I could have written only about the case board. It is single-handedly my favorite part of the game. But let it suffice to say that I was struck by the innovative use of the case board system in a video game the same way I was struck by the Nemesis system in Shadows of Mordor. It made me ask the questions, why isn't this mechanic being used in way more games. Shadows of Doubt is onto something, I can't wait to see what more the developers do.
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Liked: - The investigation process of solving cases never gets old. Finding small pieces of the puzzle and connecting them to larger threads always feels great. - The investigation board is wonderful and I love the amount of depth I have to arrange my board the way I want to. - The music is very atmospheric without getting repetitive. Meh: - Sometimes the game is a bit ambiguous with what it is looking for. The number of times I've added evidence that places the murderer at the scene, only for it to be rejected, is quite high and I have no idea what I am doing wrong or what the game is actually looking for. - The Sync Disk system is mostly useless. It's nice to get extra carrying capacity, but beyond that the other upgrades are extremely weak and don't really provide any substantial gameplay benefits. - Same with the housing system. I don't spend any time in my house, so the idea of upgrading apartments doesn't mean anything, which also makes currency an afterthought. I Retired with over 25k and only spent money on handcuffs and the occasional camera. - NPC pathing and collision detection is hilariously bad. - Dialog between NPCs is often utter nonsense. Disliked: - The citizen dialog system is truly bad. The only reason I ever talk to citizens is to try and get them to allow me to look in their house, and to round out their profile card. Nothing is dynamic, so many times any info an NPC is actually able to offer up doesn't benefit the player in any way. For example, I was asking someone if they had seen anything unusual, and someone said that they saw someone acting strange and angry around the time my victim was murdered. "Great!" I thought. Their description of the person: average build. That's it. I couldn't ask any follow up questions: Was it a man or woman? Light skinned or dark skinned? Hair color? Anything. So even when an NPC was "useful" it was actually anything but. - The visuals are fun, but the lighting is really poor. The shaders make so many things completely shrouded because of how the game interprets the lighting, so sometimes scenes are lit way too dark and I can't actually see anything. - No "memories" for NPCs. If I punch an NPC in their home, run away for 30 seconds and then come back, they act like nothing happened. For a game with such a persistent world, it's unfortunate how little decisions in game actually matter long term. - Some cases are truly unsolvable. I got a snatch and grab side job from someone, and the only info available to me in the dossier of my target was that it was a person with a beard, wears glasses, and has an O+ blood type. There's literally nothing I can do with that information. - It's super easy to cheese the game. The police station has a room of computers with access to the citizens database, and the info on those citizens is exhaustive. So all I had to do was do a random, broad search of random two-letter entries and then print the files of anyone who came up. After doing that for about ten minutes you can get info on almost every citizen in the city, which means that sometimes you will scan for fingerprints and match it with someone in your notebook, immediately giving you the answers to mysteries from the case. With all of that being said, it actually is really fun and the positives generally outweigh the negatives. I'd love to see a major update to the game that overhauls the NPC dialog system and allows for more dynamic conversations and the ability to dig deeper into conversation threads.
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I've played this detective game for 23.5 hours. I have killed multiple random people just for being rude to me. I have followed people to their apartments, tied them up, beat them, stole their things, and left them with nothing. I have slept with bums and caused them to get harassed after I made a bunch of noise throwing garbage cans around. I have outwitted security cameras and turrets. I have escaped from hospitals without paying. I have climbed through vents to get into bedrooms, and then stood in the closet and watched through the slats as people came in and got naked. I have filled my own apartment with guns, skulls and drugs. I still have yet to even attempt to solve a single murder. 10/10
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I went to investigate the first murder in a new save. A man had been shot to death in the street. There was no useful surveillance, no fingerprints on anything, not even the shell casings. Whoever did this was a pro. I looked up the victim's government records, investigated their home and everyone they knew. Nothing. The day was almost over and I knew that by morning the killer would strike again. At a loss, I returned to the crime scene to see if there was anything I had missed. I scoured over the pavement in desperation, looking at used napkins and empty cans for any sign of a clue. Then I found it. A crumpled piece of paper in the gutter, with an anagram of the killer's name, challenging me to find them. I read the letters and a revelation hit me like a truck: I already know the killer. Before this case, I had taken a small job to pass the time. A minor surveillance gig, I was supposed to take a photo of some poor bastard I was being paid to stalk. I had never completed it, my investigation was put on pause when a sudden murder stole my attention. The name of the man who issued that job I never finished was very peculiar and memorable, full of apostrophes and dashes. The anagram could only possibly spell one name. His rare, weird name. It HAD to be him. I grabbed his government file as soon as possible and raced to his apartment, I knocked frantically at the door and once someone was ready to answer it, flung myself down the hallway and drop-kicked the door as hard as I could, blasting it open and knocking the woman behind it unconscious. She was the wife of the suspect. He wasn't even home. I handcuffed her as I ripped the apartment apart, vandalizing everything I could get my hands on. I tore through their computer while on painkillers before getting drunk in the living room and throwing a bottle of wine directly into the drywall for no reason. I took a shower and then forgot to dry myself, slipping in the kitchen and hitting my head on the ground while attempting to get a piece of meat to throw in the face of the woman I had kidnapped in my pursuit of justice. Throughout all of this I had found no useful information and was getting desperate. I even tried throwing a boiling tea kettle into the face of that woman before questioning her to see if it would make her more cooperative. It didn't. I began to wonder if it was possible to have two people with the same weird name. Surely not? I checked the city directory and there were two people with the same name. I had broken into the wrong house and spent about 20 minutes beating the innocent wife of an innocent man and breaking things. In the end, I'd do it all again for the sake of justice. I eventually reported the right person and my social credit score went up, which means I did nothing wrong. You can't judge me.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 28 November 2024 00:39 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 December 2024 14:08 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:49 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 12:02 |
Online players
466
Developer
ColePowered Games
Publisher
Fireshine Games
Release
26 Sep 2024
Platforms