"It's a vast living simulation full of crossing-over data points, and every now and again one of those data points murders one of the other data points, and that's where the fun begins."
Shadows of Doubt is a procedurally generated Immersive Sim developed by ColePowered Games. The game takes place in a Cyberpunk dystopia, with the player cast as a former police enforcer who takes up the role of a Private Detective in hopes of staying afloat, and potentially a chance to head to The Fields, a suburban retirement district that Starch Kola uses to encourage the people to keep working.
In the game, the player is tasked with performing various types of detective work, such as taking odd jobs posted around the payphones of the city and investigating the murders that crop up. After some time wandering the streets, the game will determine a citizen to become a Serial Killer, and have them kill a target, leaving a Calling Card which gives the player a lead. Depending on how the generation works, the player may need to investigate the victim's workplace, use an odd clue to try and figure out the killer's name, or use the victim's contacts to narrow down who may potentially know them enough to want them dead, among other methods. This being a simulation, it is very possible for a lead to turn up a dead end, or a clue to be too vague at first, becoming more clear in later crime scenes.
The goal is to gain social credit from solving cases, eventually gaining the right to retire to The Fields. Until then, it is possible to buy a living space in the city, or even remain homeless, resolving basic needs through public facilities, or using other people's homes, with or without their permission.
The game launched on Steam
in early access on 24th April 2023, and has been receiving patches since then, with new content planned for each quarter of 2023. The first major update, Cheats and Liars, would be revealed with a release date of 25th September 2023, with the addition of infidelity cases and a hotel being added to cities.
Shadows of Doubt contains examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: An option for you to get around buildings. Unlike most examples, there are some caveats to this. For one, there’s no convenient map to the vents, so it is very possible to get lost in the maze of the ducts unless you manage to track down the building blueprints. Also, crawling around the metal tunnels will eventually cause you to feel cold, slowly draining your health, making it possible to pass out in the vents, forcing you to pay a fine for trespassing (plus any other fines you accumulated beforehand) alongside your hospital bill. Finally, nearby people can hear you crawling in the vent, so it's not quite as stealthy as in other games.
- Affair Letters: The infidelity cases added in the Cheats and Liars update have such letters, whether handwritten or digital, as a potential clue for finding out who the paramour is.
- All Crimes Are Equal: Getting caught committing any illegal act will immediately result in the witness attacking you, no matter if they're a cop, civilian, or automated security system. The only difference between picking a lock and attacking someone with a sword is the value of the fine you'll get hit with.
- Alternate History: The game is set in an alternate 1979 where the world is a heavily polluted, corporation-dominated dystopia. While world history isn't relevant to the gameplay, loading screen text and books provide some world-building:
- The Point of Divergence is 1610 when English inventor William Lee's stocking frame knitting machine sparked a glorious industrial revolution in France. This didn't occur in reality because King Henri IV was assassinated, causing Lee to lose the backing of the French royal court, fail to find a market for his machine, and die in poverty.
- After divergence, Bonnie Prince Charlie overthrew the Hanover dynasty in England in 1745 with help from a much wealthier France, cementing peace between the kingdoms. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette presided over the union of France and England into the Anglo-French Empire, which reigned over most of western Europe and North America through the end of the 19th century.
- The "Old Bourbon Empire" finally collapsed in 1901 after a decade of civil conflicts that involved chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and was reorganized into the United Atlantic States in 1902. The UAS decided to recognize corporate personhood to revitalize its struggling economy in 1909, and this opened the door for the corporation Starch Kola, producer of the world's most popular beverages and snack foods, to be elected president in 1965.
- By 1973, sea levels had risen so high that cities were cut off from each other, rendering automobiles obsolete. The reduction of farmland caused a global famine between 1976 and 1979, which was solved by Starch Kola inventing synthetic meat and making the technology public.
- Always Night: While the Earth still undergoes a normal day/night cycle, the pollution is so bad there is very little difference between the two any longer, and the city is plunged in a pseudo eternal night.
- America Is Still a Colony: Thanks to France and England joining the Anglo-French Empire, the American Revolution was swiftly suppressed in 1776.
- Anonymous Public Phone Call: Classic red telephone boxes can be found throughout the city, and cost one crow to use. Many businesses, especially restaurants and bars, also have public phones; these usually have job offers posted next to them.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- There can only be one Serial Killer in the city at a time, ensuring the player doesn't get mixed up trying to figure out which murder belongs to which case.
- Likewise, it's Never Suicide, preventing players from wasting time chasing murderers that don't actually exist.
- Most killers target people they know, so even if all your other leads turn up blank, you still have a chance of being able to brute-force the case using the victim's address book and coworkers' info.
- Citizens reuse passcodes for all safes, door keypads, and computers in their possession. If you find a note with a code for a person's safe, you now also have access to the rest of their secure devices.
- You can't ever lose your flashlight, watch, fingerprint scanner, codes, and keys, even if all your other items are taken away. Likewise, you can't lose your case notes; once you've seen a piece of information, you know it forever, though it may be a challenge to find it again to pin it to your case board afterward.
- The detective doesn't leave fingerprints on things they touch outside of their own apartment, preventing you from wasting time investigating your own prints.
- The player can't die, just pass out from their injuries. If the authorities take you down, you wake up in the city hall medical ward fully healed, but with the medical costs and fines for your crimes automatically deducted from your wallet. If you get mugged, you wake up in a random basement room.
- Light switches glow in the dark, saving the player time and energy scanning every inch of the room with their flashlight just to brighten up the place.
- As with the Grand Theft Auto games, should you break the law yourself (deliberately or not), the Enforcers will give up and forget everything if you can evade them... or you'll fail and, as above, end up in the hospital with only a hit to your wallet. Criminal records aren't a thing, and there's no way you can screw up so badly that the law takes you off the streets for good.
- Artificial Meat: Artificial animal meat, invented by Starch Kola, is the norm everywhere and is sometimes blended with "reconstituted" real meat to make things like burgers and fried chicken.
- Bio-Augmentation: "Sync discs" allow you to modify your own genes to provide various benefits.
- Black Market: A black market hides somewhere in the Fathoms of every city. They exist in the gameplay mainly to supply would-be murderers with firearms since private gun ownership is illegal in the UAS. However, black markets also keep partial records of their customers, so if an active killer is using a gun of some kind, it's usually worth it to check the local black market for recent gun purchases.
- Bounty Hunter: Although optional, you can actually arrest the killer to make more money. You can also take "arrest" side jobs, which require tracking down and arresting those wanted by the Enforcers.
- Calling Card: Murder scenes will usually contain at least one of these, whether it be a message scrawled in red near the corpse, or an object left behind at the scene of each crime. More often than not, the object variety will have the killer's fingerprints on them.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Any random citizen you meet may eventually become important for a future case, and the game keeps any record you make of a citizen in preparation for this. If such a person does end up having a significant role, your previously collected info will provide a head start for the case.
- City Noir: The city is quite grim, with people working dead-end jobs in the vague hope of obtaining retirement, large buildings with many apartments and companies, and of course, a lot of crime.
- Civil War: The Anglo-French Empire collapsed at the end of the 19th century due to a series of rebellions collectively known as the Mustard War. The name refers to the use of mustard gas by the military, as well as the four yellow fleur-de-lis on the Anglo-French flag.
- Common Law Marriage: Implied, as marriage-related terms are never used, with cohabiting couples always being referred to as partners.
- Criminal Mind Games: Occasionally, the killer will leave a note taunting the detective by asking them to play a game, followed by a string of random letters. This usually backfires on them, mostly because said letters are actually an anagram for their full name, making it much easier to narrow down the murderer once you figure it out.
- Cue the Billiard Shot: Pool tables are common furniture in bars; you can even play a little by interacting with the balls.
- Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: You won't be seeing much of the sun, just overcasting clouds, which often give way to rain (or, a bit more unusually for the genre, snow).
- Deadly Gas: Mustard gas was employed extensively by the Anglo-French Empire against rebels during the Mustard War.
- Defiant to the End: The Cheats and Liars update added the ability to announce to someone that you’re arresting them. There’s a good chance that they’ll refuse this, and proceed to attack you, usually with the same weapon they used on their victims, forcing you to beat them into submission before you can cuff them.
- Different States of America: The United Atlantic States, which spans North America and western Europe.
- Does Not Like Guns: The combat section of the help menu mentions that “You swore off the use of firearms long ago”, explaining why Pistol-Whipping is all you can do with guns.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: Donuts are one of the cheaper food items available in the game, are decently filling, and can even be purchased from vending machines, making them rather convenient for the semi-sanctioned private detective on the go.
- Dynamic Entry: It's entirely possible to knock on someone's door, wait for them to unlock it, and immediately kick it open straight into their face, knocking them out instantly.
- Fantastic Drug: Invoked by Starch Kola with a Sync Disc that grants a sizeable cash loan in exchange for you becoming extremely addicted to their signature soft drink, leading to withdrawal symptoms should you not consume any for a short time. To remove the Sync Disc, you have to pay off your debt, which can be accomplished by recommending Starch Kola to other citizens.
- Fictional Currency: The currency of the UAS is the credit. Credits are nicknamed "crows" due to the coins having a bird on one face.
- Film Noir: The game's aesthetics take after this genre, particularly the constant rain and snow.
- First-Person Ghost: All you ever see of your character is their hands (and sleeves). Your profile doesn't have a photo associated with it, you don't show up in reflections—hell, you don't even leave fingerprints.
- Fleur-de-lis: The flag of the Anglo-French Empire bears four fleurs-de-lis surrounding Saint George's Cross.
- Flooded Future World: With industrialization occurring earlier and being much more extensive in the game's timeline, Global Warming was recognized as a looming calamity as early as 1910. By 1979, so much of the world was underwater that it caused a major food shortage, and cars fell out of use and now rust in the streets because roadways between cities are submerged. Even the cities aren't completely dry; the sub-basement levels of every building are persistently flooded.
- Foreshadowing: Can happen quite often, especially if one is particularly attentive to random dialogue or NPC behaviors. A particularly unique example considering the game's divergent gameplay means none of them were planned beforehand.
- Pay attention if a random civilian you bother suddenly whips out a gun when they become hostile, especially if the current line of murders all have gunshots as the unifying cause of death. There's a significant chance they may in fact be the killer you're currently hunting and are threatening you with the murder weapon.
- Occasionally you might notice characters talking about the Red Gums Cult, and sometimes one of the sides of that conversation will tell the other not to talk about them. If you're currently looking into a murder with clear signs of occult involvement, that character is worth looking into to see if they're the one committing murders in the cult's name.
- It's entirely possible to run into the killer on their way out of the crime scene. If you're familiar with the population of a particular apartment building and notice someone out of place right after a murder is reported, they're worth looking into.
- Future Slang: Computers in this setting are called "crunchers".
- Graceful Loser: After the Cheats and Liars update, you can announce to someone that you’re arresting them, with a chance that they will accept that they’ve been caught, and allow you to cuff them.
- Greasy Spoon: Somewhat dingy 24-hour diners can be found throughout the city. Since your jobs don't follow any particular timetable, you'll often find yourself eating at these simply because they're the only places that stay open late.
- Geo Effects: Rain causes you to become wet, increasing the chances of slipping if you run on certain surfaces but also cleaning you slowly. Snow (or crawling around in air ducts) causes you to become cold over time, draining your health.
- Great Detective: You, if you put the legwork in.
- Great Offscreen War: The Mustard War, which ended well before the present but certainly informs the world that the protagonist lives in.
- Hardboiled Detective: The overall atmosphere of the game seems to encourage this, though it's up to you if you play the archetype straight or subvert it.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: At the start, you choose the name for your protagonist (along with their gender and skin colour), as well as a name for the city that gets generated.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: One of the Status Effects in the game is this. Usually you can pull it off by covering your face with a newspaper.
- Hide Your Children: Considering the deeply noir-inspired setting and the gruesome murders happening on a regular basis, the game's decision to remove kids is probably a smart choice in that it lowers the amount of NPC 'clutter' in the world and prevents the emergent AI from generating either a child killer or a killer child.
- A Homeowner Is You: You can purchase multiple apartments across each city. There's also an option when generating a new city to begin the game with a pre-furnished, mid-size apartment.
- If It Bleeds, It Leads: In-universe newspapers usually feature details about whatever murder has recently taken place—including stuff the player may have missed, making it worthwhile to go to a newsstand to snag a copy after leaving the crime scene.
- Immersive Sim: The city is fully simulated, and every citizen has their own routine that they will follow, there is no set story beyond the basics, and new cases will be generated over time. Many methods of investigation require some knowledge of how the systems tie together.
- Improvised Weapon: Any weapon you can wield in-game that isn't a truncheon, sword, combat knife, or one of the various guns is this. Options range from chef's knives to hammers to syringes. You can also pick up and throw random decorative objects, which is surprisingly effective.
- Infinite Flashlight: You've got one. It's apparently built into your head since it doesn't actually appear in your inventory and you can activate it while holding something else in your hands. You will need it, since some areas of the game (like cupboards) are very dark, and it can be disadvantageous to switch on a light when you're trying to sneak around.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Your apartment can be decorated to your heart's content.
- Key Under the Doormat: A possible feature for apartment complexes to generate is doormats, and there’s a small chance any given doormat will have a key hidden underneath, which you can claim if you shift the doormat away. This is much more likely for apartments on the lower floors of the building; the wealthy elites who occupy the top floors seem to be more security-savvy.
- Kinky Cuffs: You can sometimes find handcuffs in bedroom drawers or under the bed itself. This usually only occurs if the occupant of the unit has a partner.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: While sneaking into a citizen's home or workplace, you can steal any loose items lying around, including keys and money which never take up inventory space. It's possible to accumulate a key to nearly every door in the city. Not to mention that stealing information is the main reason you'll be sneaking into places in the first place.
- Laser Hallway: Some businesses, and most higher-end apartments, have security lasers installed that periodically sweep over the room. The beam is visible to the naked eye, so it's not too hard to get out of the way, but unlike CCTV cameras it trips the alarm instantly if it detects you.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: The Enforcers are a privatized police force owned by the Starch Kola company. As to be expected, they don't do much beyond sealing up crime scenes and leaving the actual investigating to private detectives.
- MegaCorp: The backstory of the game explains that Starch Kola is a megacorporation that was elected president of the United Atlantic States, and has held the office for 14 straight years. Other megacorps include Kaizen-6, which is president of the Eastern Dynasties, investment bank Kensington Indigo, global news service Candor, and Elliot Genetics.
- Newspaper-Thin Disguise: You can carry a newspaper and hold it up in front of your own face to hide from citizens.
- Nuclear Option: Late in the Mustard War, when mustard gas proved insufficient to put down rebel groups, the Anglo-French Empire resorted to nuclear weapons.
- Omniscient Database: Downplayed. Various businesses keep databases of employees or customers, which can be a wealth of information in their own right, but the only database that includes everyone is the government database accessible from City Hall. To search for someone in a database, you must know their name; you can't search for their description or other details.
- Pistol-Whipping: The detective Does Not Like Guns, and as such, hitting people is all you can do with them; you can't actually fire them.
- Police Are Useless: The Enforcers are a privatized police force owned by the Starch Kola company. They don't seem interested in actually solving crimes, they just seal off crime scenes and even outsource arrests to citizen contractors. Enforcers mainly exist as obstacles to your investigation, making it tricky to collect clues.
- Private Detective: You are one, doing investigations and odd jobs for money. The fact that you can go nab murderers yourself for a bonus introduces some overlap with the Bounty Hunter trope.
- Procedural Generation: The city you play in is randomly generated from a seed, creating buildings, citizens, and companies. As the game continues, it will decide various events that will happen, including every Serial Killer and their targets... but if you reload to before these events occur, they will happen again with different parameters (building, victim, suspect, etc).
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Technically it's not quite aesthetic, as a character's gender is recorded on their paperwork and can be used to verify their identity. Apart from that, there is no gameplay effect; all characters are equally likely to be criminals or victims regardless of gender. NPCs will complain at you if they spot you in a bathroom that doesn't match your registered gender, though.
- Released to Elsewhere: Implied. Everyone wants to earn entry to The Fields. But no one knows what The Fields look like or where they are exactly, and there's no way to contact anyone who lives there. Citizens who are relocating to The Fields are also required to transfer all of their money and property to another citizen before they leave.
- Religion of Evil: The Red Gums are Social Darwinist cultists who teach dubiously existent Black Magic to get ahead...and thus, can result in cultic Serial Killer cases.
- Retirony: It's not uncommon to find emails in a victim's computer talking about how they were ready to retire. Of course, the UAS being the Crapsack World that it is, said retirement requires them to put in a 10 months notice first.
- Retro Universe: The intro cutscene mentions that it's "the late twentieth century", and the game certainly looks it. Payphones and CRT monitors abound.
- Room Full of Crazy: Particularly unhinged killers may have apartments absolutely covered in crumpled notes and papers, with each one having writings alluding to their killings in some way.
- Schizo Tech: Gramophones and black-and-white televisions coexist alongside desktop computers with color monitors, handheld fingerprint scanners, hovering trains, and genetic engineering. The analogue for the internet is a pneumatic tube network.
- Sentry Gun: The cornerstone of private security systems in Shadows of Doubt. Even the smaller, less wealthy apartment buildings can have them.
- Serial Killer: Every murder case is from one of these. Over time, they will claim more lives until you eventually catch them, using their Calling Cards to figure them out.
- Shout-Out: The icon for "Coming Through", the Steam achievement for KOing someone by kicking in a door, is a pixelated version of the "Here's Johnny!" scene from The Shining.
- Show Within a Show: The televisions play scenes from an in-universe crime drama when turned on. We're only shown still slides to represent the visuals, but the audio is fully recorded and sounds exactly like what you'd expect from a Film Noir in this alternate reality.
- Socially Scored Society: The social credit score system is used to track a citizen's contributions to society. You start at 1, and you need a score of 8 before you can apply to retire to The Fields.
- Status Effects: Various types pop up over time, affecting various aspects of your character.
- Being cold from the snow or air vents slowly drains your health.
- Hunger and thirst will stop you from Regenerating Health.
- Bleeding will deal damage over time.
- A bruise will cause incoming damage to be increased.
- Being wet from the rain or a shower can make you slip if you run on certain surfaces.
- Being stinky from being close to bad-smelling objects or simply not showering will make you easier to detect.
- Coffee can energise you, increasing movement speed.
- Being hydrated boosts the rate of your Regenerating Health.
- String Theory: Your case notes menu is represented like this. Once you've discovered a piece of evidence, you can pin it to the board to refer back to later; related pins are automatically connected with string, or you can make your own connections manually.
- Stupid Crooks: Murderers use the same dialogue system as every other character, so there's a chance that if you show them a photo of their victim, they'll mention seeing them...at the exact time and place they were murdered, which is basically a confession. Worse yet, some of them, if confronted in their apartments, will grant you their fingerprint and/or even let you look around, allowing you to gather all the rest of the evidence you need to put them away.
- Super Window Jump: You can do this if you need to leave somewhere in a hurry. Breaking out windows and leaping through them will be problematic for you early on, but it is possible to buy augmentations that reduce falling damage, making this a more viable strategy as you progress.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In spades.
- Most detective work will consist of sifting through piles of paperwork to find the info that you need. The easiest way to find someone's address is to look them up in the local equivalent of the Yellow Pages.
- The protagonist is a Private Detective, not a cop, much less a Cowboy Cop; as far as the law is concerned, you're just an unusually nosy civilian. This means you're not allowed to waltz around crime scenes with impunity, as it's considered trespassing. Before the Cheats and Liars update, you also couldn't publicly arrest people, as it was considered assault; that changed when the update dropped, and now you can cuff people in broad daylight if you've got probable cause to believe they're the murderer.
- Climbing through ventilation ducts isn't silent, and it causes you to become cold over time.
- Soft Glass is averted; punching out a glass window can injure your hand. Trying to pull an "Open!" Says Me by kicking down a locked door can also injure your foot, on top of being extremely noisy. On the flip side, should you break open the door and someone is on the other side, you will knock them out cold because a 50-100lb. piece of wood being shoved open in their face is not good for their health.
- We Buy Anything is also averted; only dedicated pawn shops will buy items from you.
- Turning your flashlight on makes you more visible, though less so than turning the room lighting on.
- Some odd jobs may ask you to get a photograph of someone. Usually, the mark won’t be happy about you randomly taking a photo of them for what seems like no reason, and will quickly try to beat you up over it.
- Mucking about in the flooded sewer levels will give you the Stinky debuff (until you can shower), which will be a problem if you're trying to remain inconspicuous.
- Killings are rarely truly random; while motives aren't always clear, just like in real life, many victims are killed by people they know, like friends, coworkers, and neighbors. There is almost always a connection.
- Suspect Is Hatless: Sometimes, the arrest jobs give you amusingly little to go on. As an example, you might be provided only the target's blood type, salary, and lack of facial hair with which to start searching for them. Particularly unhelpful cases will start you with nothing but a blood type and a building, and expect you to get a suspect out of that.
- Tactical Door Use: While NPCs are able to open doors normally, you can buy a door wedge from City Hall that jams any door you place it on until it's removed, allowing you to (for example) search an apartment in peace while the occupant is away, without worrying that they'll come home and catch you while you're still inside.
- Tae Kwon Door: While just opening or closing a door is harmless, a door that's been kicked open will knock out any NPC in its swing arc. You can exploit this by knocking on a door, waiting for someone on the other side to unlock it, and then kicking it. Because unlocked doors are kicked open in one hit, the person on the other side will be knocked out in one blow.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: While the detective can attack, arrest, rob, and mug basically anyone they want, the player is absolutely forbidden from actually killing anyone. The most you can do is knock them out cold.
- Unwanted False Faith: The Red Gums, fanatical Darwinian social climbers and worshipers of Starch Kola founder Eden Krueger. Eden never acknowledged them, but that didn't stop them from making blood sacrifices to him and assassinating a rival CEO.
- Urban Segregation: Every UAS city is informally split into three layers by social status:
- The Fathoms encompass the basement levels of a building, which are dilapidated and partially flooded, plus any street slums. Unlicensed businesses, criminals, undesirables, and the homeless reside here.
- The Myriads extend from street level to a building's middle floors. This is where the vast majority of a city's inhabitants live and work.
- The Echelons cover a building's middle up to the penthouse, rising above the cloud of pollution that shrouds every city. Echelon residents are the wealthy social elite.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: There's nothing stopping the player from being an absolute menace between investigations, smashing windows, knocking out and looting random civilians, and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Hell, some jobs even pay you to do so.
- With This Herring: On top of the issues mentioned under Suspect Is Hatless above (getting missions with absurdly few clues), you're also just a civilian with no authority. You can only legally search a location if you get the suspect's permission, and for equipment, you start with just a watch, a flashlight, and a fingerprint scanner. You even have to buy your own handcuffs and weapons...and if you get in trouble, don't even think about backup coming.
- Worst Aid: Starch Kola's eponymous product was originally marketed as a cure for radiation sickness during the Mustard War.
