Shadows of Doubt (2023, United Kingdom)

Shadows of Doubt 2023 crime mystery game

Shadows of Doubt is an open-world detective game with a pixel-art aesthetics, in which you are placed in a small part of the city full of people, and you try to solve cases that land on your laps. Each case is procedurally generated, so each time you will get a different set of clues and different location.

On surface, it looks like just another detective game, but the open-world factor was pushed here a bit further, and you not only travel through the part of the city, but also you can enter any apartment in any building. And yes, not always legally. The goal remains the same - find the killer - but you can approach that task in completely different ways.

At least it would seem that you can approach the investigation in different ways, but in fact most of the time you have no other choice than break into the buildings in order to see the crime scene or find the evidence. The cases, while slightly different, usually come down to the same set of tasks - find the fingerprints or the murder weapon on the crime scene and then find the identity of the killer (usually through a database).

While very ambitious, Shadows of Doubt is nothing more than a tech demo - the open world is quite limited, the number of people us limited, the types of cases is limited. There are different elements (f.e. checking the CCTV materials or searching through notebooks and documents) that will make you say "wow, that is impressive", but most of the time they are just side-interests that have very little influence on your investigation.

Discover more

If you enjoy crime dramas, you can test your skills in an online detective game called The Lone Detective. You can play it free via browser. Challenge yourself

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