Overall, though I felt the story could benefit from a gripping narrative or fleshed-out characters to reward our detective efforts, the narrative felt shallow and nonexistent across my three playthroughs. While I can appreciate the depressing feeling of existing as a powerless machine in a world that cares nothing for you, I would have liked to have some impact on the city or enjoyed a depressing revelation to cap off our dreary adventure. Worse yet, there was little narrative reward for our efforts, and the lack of an ending left me dumbfounded as I stared at a broken title screen.Īll-in-all, while I walked away from Shadows of Doubt disappointed with the story’s lack of interaction, I admired the grim world-building put into our setting. The emails, interrogation, and telephone calls amounted to copy-pasted flavor text I had to sift through to find relevant details. Still, after the initial setup, I soon became increasingly disgruntled with Shadows of Doubt’s lack of narrative. Don’t let the dialogue tree fool you NPCs dialogue and answers remain the same regardless of character. Tasked with earning Social Credit to escape to the “Fields,” the promised worker’s paradise, I was enthralled by our grim quest for freedom in this morally decadent dystopia. Set in an alternate 1980s where the Stark Cola Corporation reigns as president of the North Atlantic States and most people live in overpopulated, over-polluted cities, we play as a homeless detective solving cases to make ends meet. I was thoroughly impressed with the setup for Shadows of Doubt’s narrative.
Long Ago, In Dystopian City Far, Far Away From its grim opening, I was utterly invested in Shadows of Doubt’s world. Still, if we’re willing to push past the challenging learning curve, we’ll find ourselves with an immersive, albeit highly challenging, detective sim.
The clues used for identifying the murderers and the lack of story failed to keep me interested after hours of questioning civilians, reviewing security footage, and scanning for fingerprints. Unfortunately, while Shadows of Doubt houses an impressively simulated world with brutally despairing immersion, I was frustrated by the sheer challenge posed by deducing citizens with limited information. Boasting a fully realized corporatist dystopia with detailed backgrounds for each character and wholly unique murders, the featured game in this Shadows of Doubt review offers an eternally replayable detective sim. Armed with a fingerprint scanner, a noir trenchcoat, and a host of cybernetic implants, we’re tasked with solving murders in this Blade Runner-inspired, polluted future. Even so, I find these mysteries challenging to enjoy on a second playthrough unless we forget the killer or all the clues, we’ll just go through the motions again without much challenge.Įnter Shadows of Doubt, a procedurally generated detective sim set in a futuristic dystopian 1980s. From identifying the crew’s names and cause of death in Obra Dinn to finally making the arrest in Disco Elysium, piecing together clues to solve cases is an ever-gratifying process.
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