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.

In whatever year this Early Access game comes out in, it'll be a serious fucking GOTY contender. An open world sandbox where you can sit back and do whatever you damn well please in whatever means necessary in order to complete whatever you want? Sign me the fuck up.

Some cases are short, some are long, some aren't even about murder. It's about having a damn fun time and that's all that matters in the end. That and getting an apartment and then subsequently retiring.

Everyone having something to do is great, only issue is I wish there was a more distinct day/night cycle and that the randomly generated cases had a lot more variety in them. Graffiti is mostly the same, clues are usually the same when you get them, and if that person has a roommate they honestly probably did it and therefore will never return to that apartment and be lost amongst the city never to be found. I want to see this game become a fully fledged masterpiece and I'll be patient until a person tells me it's finished.

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.