SHADOWS OF DOUBT

A detective procedural

The first thing we do, in our pre-alpha build of Shadows Of Doubt, is delete the entire world. On starting a new game, you’re given the option to generate your own rainy cyber-noir city, with size and population density sliders to choose exactly how big a haystack you’ll search for your murderous needle in – but project lead Cole Jefferies suggests we begin with the provided demo world (four blocks by five, population: 146). Which, with a single stray keystroke, we remove from existence. Oops.

This accident does, at least, give us chance to generate a new world. A loading bar spools through tasks – lays out blueprints, creates life, plants evidence – and in doing so, weaves an entirely new murder mystery for us to solve. “In my game, the killer might be in a certain apartment, and in another game, it might be a completely different person, in a completely different part of the city,” Jefferies explains. “But the basis of the storyline, the key beats, are the same.”

In this game, we find the victim – one Charles Sesay – upstairs in our own apartment building, his blood spattered all over the tiles of his bathroom. But first we have to reach that room. As a private eye operating on the fringes of the law, accessing most crime scenes will involve a little criminal activity of your own. (Get caught, and after taking a beating you’ll wake up back in your apartment, with a fine depending on your current felony level.)