Shadows of Doubt - Cyberpunk Noir Detective Immersive Sim Procedurally Generated Sandbox Game

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

From the steam page

Shadows of Doubt is set in an alternate reality in the hyper-industrialized 1980s. Think like a detective and use a variety of gadgets as a private intelligence investigator, gathering evidence and making money by solving cases, finding and selling information and more.

Play your own way in a fully simulated world with hundreds of citizens. Discover, meet and tail individual citizens, each with their own name, job, apartment and daily routine, in unique, procedurally-generated cities. Each case has different culprits, clues and experiences for you to test your investigative skills.

The main mode in this game is Sandbox mode, Where the city and all its inhabitants are randomly generated, so every case is slightly different. Victims, Killers, Evidence, addresses, all unique to each city.

Its been in development since 2015, announced in 2018, and released April 23, 2023. Shockingly it mostly lives up to tags and description, though is early access and is full of bugs. There is a good Zero Punctuation video on it which does cover some stuff about it i think really makes it special. If any of the Tags are something you are interested in i recommend you try it out, its a really fun game full of potential.

Steam Store Page - Its a really great game and is well worth a try, Paid or Not.

Now, fair warning, this game has some under currents of woke shit, your character can be Non Binary and Gay couples are extremely common, i actually think i am yet to see a straight couple in this game. This isn't a deal breaker for me, but its worth knowing about incase it gets more overt. Also the game doesn't let you use firearms, you can pick up guns and ammo, but you can't shoot guns. The Devs seems against letting the player use guns or kill and this is a rather big point of contention in the steam discussions.

Hopefully this game goes better than ready or not.

 

[Night Crawler]

Is the killer some kind of biomechanical thing? This looks like Bladerunner.

What happened to Ready or Not.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Is the killer some kind of biomechanical thing? This looks like Bladerunner.

What happened to Ready or Not.

I should have brought this up in OP and I will quickly edit it to add it, but every case is randomly generated. So the killer is one of the citizens of your randomly generated town, there is a handmade tutorial part that will learn you the game, but the main sandbox mode is totally random.

Ready or not just kinda died with the devs not putting out a update since December and won't till later this year, so i hope this game is more consistently updated.

 

[Sqwe-wi_Farmer]

I bought it day one it was avaliable.
Beat the sandbox more recently. 3.5/5
But it needs variety it has good bones for a game but their just needs to be more permutations of possible evidences as well as maybe even have crimes also have accomplices and it could become extremely great. As well as crimes that aren't just murder or stealing people's stuff.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Also the game doesn't let you use firearms, you can pick up guns and ammo, but you can't shoot guns.

You can pick them up as evidence, or just as random, pointless items scattered about? The latter seems really bizarre.

Game reminds me a bit of the old title Westerado: Double Barreled, where you're going around an open world trying to find information about who murdered your family, which changes each time. That one lets you just pull out your gun and threaten anybody, though.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

You can pick them up as evidence, or just as random, pointless items scattered about?

Both, Guns can be used in murders and you can go to a weapons store and search the files to find out who has bought that type of gun, but guns are also just world objects, i've found them in apartments, in pawn shops, i found a guys desk at his workplace that was stocked with ammo. (i was actually investigating a murder that was commited with a gun, but that guy didn't do it, big mislead)
It seems clear to me there is at least some plan for the player to be able to use ranged weapons, with one of the roadmap images even showing what i think is the player character using gun of some sort, but we will have to wait and see what they do.

But it needs variety it has good bones for a game but their just needs to be more permutations of possible evidences as well as maybe even have crimes also have accomplices and it could become extremely great. As well as crimes that aren't just murder or stealing people's stuff.

I agree but am stumped on what other crimes they could add, i feel like Murder and Theft are the most obvious things to do, and anything else might be too in depth for a randomly generate game to do.

 

[Harvey Danger]

I bought it day one it was avaliable.
Beat the sandbox more recently. 3.5/5
But it needs variety it has good bones for a game but their just needs to be more permutations of possible evidences as well as maybe even have crimes also have accomplices and it could become extremely great. As well as crimes that aren't just murder or stealing people's stuff.

I've seen some streams of it, that seems about right. There's mods for it that spice things up, but I don't know if anyone has extended the core gameplay loop yet.

"good bones" is a good way to put it, assuming that gameplay isn't too hard to mod I could see a lot of potential come out of this.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

"good bones" is a good way to put it, assuming that gameplay isn't too hard to mod I could see a lot of potential come out of this.

Modding could really take this game above and beyond, but i worry the devs might be the type to not officially support modding. If we do get modding i hope someone can make is so we have more lowrise buildings, i kinda dislike how everything is either a small dinner to a 20 story building, id like some 4 to 5 story apartment blocks and such.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

You know, I heard about this and thought it was shitty, but reading about it again this sounds like a very specific game I wanted.
You remember this fascinating Watch_Dogs trailer?

I was captivated by the ideas in this trailer. Of course the final game paid only lip service to them, mechanically it was little more than cutesy fun facts about the random NPCs and occasionally eavesdropping on them for fun. And admittedly, that was fun, it felt very immersive to me and I played with it a lot. But I could imagine a version of Watch_Dogs that would have had the NPCs have identities where they could reappear, with routines, and where you could follow chains of links in data to learn new things, and basically investigate people and use THAT to find mysteries and side quests and have to piece together how you're going to play surveillance superhero.

This isn't that, but it sounds like something very much with that kind of mentality towards how the player interacts with the world.

Unfortunately, OP already said it's faggoted, why play it?

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Unfortunately, OP already said it's faggoted, why play it?

It isnt fully faggoted yet, and nothing stops you from being a racist, sexist, homophobic detective. But i see the signs of possible faggotry in the future. I honestly say pirate it and play it that way, see how you like it.

I think the issue i was having is that a lot of men just looked like women, since i have found a few straight couples since writing the op

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It sounds like shit. Why not just make a single experience and update it via mission packs? There isn't going to be a coherent narrative, and like all procedurally made games you eventually learn all the scenarios.

Also the game will likely never improve considering it's in a development for 8 years and the devs had the time to be woke and arguing with their costumers rather than solving actual bugs.

 

[Sqwe-wi_Farmer]

Isn't nearly as gay as watch_dogs or reminiscing about the worst GTA clone to exist. The woke shit seems to be in there in order to allow more differences in the characters and playing the entire game I didn't notice it until you mentioned in your post that OP mentioned it

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Isn't nearly as gay as watch_dogs or reminiscing about the worst GTA clone to exist. The woke shit seems to be in there in order to allow more differences in the characters and playing the entire game I didn't notice it until you mentioned in your post that OP mentioned it

If most of the couples in the game are gay, that’s pretty gay.

If the devs don’t allow using guns because guns make them piss themselves in fear, that’s extremely gay. (If it was a gameplay decision to have no combat, that’s good.)

 

[robobobo]

I got the game after they put out a demo back a few months ago, and I think it randomly pairs up people and just doesn't give a fuck about sexes in the process. It seems about as likely to pair two dudes as it is a dude and a chick, which is statistically out of whack, but it doesn't actually matter for the purposes of gameplay as most NPCs are about as involved as a Minecraft monster. They follow extremely intricate scripting for having a workday, going to restaurants, etc, but their sex doesn't matter one bit for any of that. In fact, it's often tricky to tell quickly whether a given person is a man or a woman, since the models are so blocky and pixelated. So it's really not striking me as woke.

There is plenty of possibility of combat in the game and you can use weapons, but honestly it's usually a bad option. The gameplay loop rewards being undetected while getting your hands on evidence and loot, if you have to go around tossing grenades in rooms you're probably just making your life more difficult.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

If the devs don’t allow using guns because guns make them piss themselves in fear, that’s extremely gay. (If it was a gameplay decision to have no combat, that’s good.)

There is combat, but the combat is pretty meh, clearly not a focus of the dev team. The gun question seems to be more worried about killing NPCs and not about "gun violence" or anything gay like that. I still think the player should be able to use a gun and be able to kill npcs if they want, but it at least seems to be a design decision, not a political one.

As i said in a follow up post, i think the Gay couple thing is largely a issue of the game's random character generation just making incredibly androgynous characters.
I do worry that my note about the Gay couple thing will scare people away from the game thinking its some gay flag waving faggot fest, when it really isn't.

There is plenty of possibility of combat in the game and you can use weapons, but honestly it's usually a bad option. The gameplay loop rewards being undetected while getting your hands on evidence and loot, if you have to go around tossing grenades in rooms you're probably just making your life more difficult.

Its very much just a roleplay concern for me, but i really want to be able to hold a NPC at gun point while i arrest them, its something that fits the theme a lot and i really think it should be added if possible. If i want my Detective to be a hot headed bastard who escalates situations constantly and leaving a trail of bullet holes and broken doors, i want to be able to do that, and i hope the devs can eventually allow for that.

 

[blablabla]

"
Now, fair warning, this game has some under currents of woke shit, your character can be Non Binary and Gay couples are extremely common, i actually think i am yet to see a straight couple in this game. This isn't a deal breaker for me, but its worth knowing about incase it gets more overt. Also the game doesn't let you use firearms, you can pick up guns and ammo, but you can't shoot guns. The Devs seems against letting the player use guns or kill and this is a rather big point of contention in the steam discussions.

Hopefully this game goes better than ready or not."

i hope it tanks and kill the studio

 

[msd]

Been playing it recently, it's pretty fun.

The woke stuff isn't really there, besides the non-binary option. I honestly think they added it because they knew people who care about that shit would constantly pepper them about it, but it's mostly background stuff and doesn't seem to affect much. The same sex couples is truly randomized, because some cities I'll have more straight couples, some cities I'll have more gay couples, my current city has a mix of both gay and straight, but as I said it's mostly background and doesn't really affect anything besides adding some funny moments when a lesbian is cheating on her wife with a man, whose married to another man.

But it runs smooth and the randomized crime is nice, it really does a good job at selling home that you're a detective.

It's kinda fun being a hard boiled shithead who can do the investigation by the books one moment, then kick in the doors of a couple the next because that's where my suspect is.

As for guns, I see the point, you're a detective, you're not really supposed to kill anyone, but I do hope it gets added in kinda, because a back alley gun fight with a serial killer I've been tracking for a few in-game days.

All in all, fun game, it's rough, but it's very fun, and I hope they smooth it out more, and add more cases