I’ve always fancied myself as an amateur detective. It started when I was young, watching Poirot, Columbo, and Murder, She Wrote with my mum and trying to guess whodunnit, or in Columbo’s case how they dun screwed it up and got caught. When I was offered the chance to solve a crime and track down a serial killer in Shadows of Doubt, I jumped at the chance.
This detective stealth game sees you explore a sci-fi noir city, looking for clues, solving puzzles, talking to witnesses, and - my favourite part - assembling an evidence board, complete with red pins. All with the added bonus of being a PI who has to be smart and secretive. Solving crimes without being a cop? In an alternative reality hyper-industrialized city in the 1980s? I was all in.
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Despite being more pixelated than picture perfect, the city feels alive as the graphics convey realness by adding tiny details like scrunched-up receipts, house keys under doormats, or pennies down the sofa. But these small drops of life fade in comparison to the citizens themselves. Every resident in the rundown apartment complexes has their own life, which they will live regardless of what you do. Uncovering the friends, family, and acquaintances of victims and delving into their jobs, routines, and any motives is key to success. It’s also where I realised that I will never make it as a PI.
The Shadows of Doubt demo sees you discover a murder after a tip is hastily shoved under your apartment door. For younger detectives, this event marks the first hurdle: old-school technology. You’ll need phone numbers and addresses but there’s no internet to search here, nor is there caller ID. Instead, you’ll have to rifle through an address book and check the hand-scrawled names against a phone number you acquired by dialing a number - on a rotary phone no less - to find out who called last. While this technology didn’t phase my ancient self, collecting enough information did.
Though you will have a reasonable amount of time to snoop, you’ll need to be mindful of the fact that almost every part of your information gathering is technically illegal. Disabling alarms, deactivating CCTV, and keeping an eye on any quick exits are at the heart of the experience. You need a switched-on mind to keep your eye on everything at once, something I lack.
As I sat in an air vent in a bathroom, hiding from the police, I realised that I’d forgotten to check the address book. I assumed I could grab the information once the cops had left but I was wrong. True to life they didn’t go until they’d completely cleared out the place, including the evidence I needed. Cops 1, Helen 0.
Sometimes the AI would be kind, and I’d manage to sneak past someone who should have noticed me, but mostly I had to hide in a lot of vents. Those who aren’t directionally challenged like I am can make great use of the vent system, which allows you to easily access almost anywhere in the city. Find a vent in an exterior wall, or on a roof, then climb through the building, and bingo. Much easier than dodging the CCTV and hoping a key is under the mat. Although we can just skip past the part where I accidentally dropped out of a roof vent into the kitchen of an occupied house, couldn’t get back up, panicked, and ended up hobbling out with a broken leg desperately chanting “please don’t chase me” repeatedly to myself.
The demo is limited to 90 minutes, and my brief experience was very engaging but also incredibly overwhelming. My brain was so focused on finding every scrap of information, disabling every camera, and keeping an ear out for unexpected visitors, I missed the most important thing of all - not screwing up your evidence board.
The evidence board is a digital pin board where you can collect clues and information and link them together using pins and string, just like you see on tv. It’s all fairly simple and intuitive as a system, but it won’t solve the case for you sadly. There is a huge amount of detection to do and it all falls on you. The game gives you a case, some clues, and a thriving world, but it won’t hold your hand as you try to piece everything together. So naturally, I fell apart.
My evidence board resembled a spider’s web, I had what felt like 27 unidentified fingerprints, none of which matched the ones at the crime scene, and I still only had one vague lead. Spread across the board were crumpled notes, receipts, images from CCTV, a name linked to the last number that called, some surprisingly threatening-sounding leaflets, and a lot of vague connections. It looked like I’d just thrown every thought I’d had in the last 90 minutes vaguely at the board and hoped it would make sense later. Which, let’s face it, is exactly what I’d done.
As the demo closed I had failed – badly. I’d already made use of the splint I found in my bathroom cabinet after the vent incident, I’d opened a lot of lockers, disabled a tonne of alarms, and even had some successful escapes. What I didn’t have was any clue, except the name of one person I couldn’t track down.
So I hit reset.
I entered the demo again, using the same pre-generated city, determined to track down the elusive woman I needed to speak to. So, did I manage it? With all this prior knowledge at my fingertips, did I solve the case the second time around? No readers, I did not. Which is why I have come to the conclusion that I’ll never make it as a detective, not even a pretend one.
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