2023-05-17 02:20:59
By Rainer Sigl
Frank Simmons lies dead in his apartment, shot with a small-caliber gun. Shortly before the murder, he was called by a colleague, I find a restaurant bill in the wastepaper basket and there are fingerprints all over the room.
Im „Detective Stealth Game“ „Shadows of Doubt“ I find many clues, but it takes quite a lot of combination skills and perseverance until I figure out who committed the crime. I have to interview witnesses, review surveillance video and phone logs, and occasionally crawl through air vents to look for evidence in offices and homes.
80’s cyberpunk noir random generator imsim
“Shadows of Doubt” is no ordinary detective game, because everything regarding my case is randomly generated: who the victim is, who the perpetrator, with which weapon the murder was committed, with what background and and and. The compact, but densely populated city and its inhabitants thanks to the remarkably tall buildings are just as procedurally generated.
The game may be reminiscent of Minecraft in its simplistic voxel look, but beneath the surface lies an intriguing, meticulously detailed simulation inspired by Warren Spector’s idea of the „One City Block RPG“ remembered: a game in a small setting, which is realistically simulated down to the last detail. “Shadows of Doubt” tries something similar, only that it also throws together its “One City Block” once more and once more at the push of a button, including residents and their backgrounds. That’s pretty amazing.
ColePowered Games
Policing 101
The setting of the game is a dystopian 80s noir downtown, finding the traces and connections that let me solve the respective case is not child’s play. How I want to proceed is up to me, a punishment system tries to keep me from the wrong path as a rabid burglar detective. The most important tools are the phone book, fingerprint scanner, lockpicks and a “fall board” on which information, statements and facts can be linked and visualized in the classic way with string.
„Shadows of Doubt“developed by ColePowered Games, distributed by Fireshine, has been released in Early Access for Windows.
In the best case, one clue leads me to the next, evidence follows evidence until I can arrest the suspect and hand them over to the authorities together with the form I have filled out; in such moments of success you feel like the hero of a TV thriller. But sometimes detective work also means going through all the witnesses one by one and painstakingly looking for a needle in a haystack.
Construction site with huge potential
The detective sandbox of “Shadows of Doubt” is so detailed and complex, especially in the first hours of the encounter, that you can hardly believe it; however, if you look at the early access game for a long time, you can see that it is not quite finished yet.
The random generation certainly makes for exciting investigative adventures, but sometimes you bite into dead ends or lose the trail – quite realistic, actually. It is less realistic that there is as yet no functional system for the psychological background of all the crimes. It’s easy to find out who it was and why, that’s often left to my imagination. However, the extensive tutorial mission gives an indication that “Shadows of Doubt” might also be a great kit for scenarios in which such things might be added “by hand”, so to speak; however, this is still a thing of the future.
Nevertheless: “Shadows of Doubt” is already a fascinating game that gives a foretaste of the future of procedural narration; at the same time, however, it also demonstrates that there is still a long way to go to get there. Those who are not put off by this are already offered one of the most exciting playful experiments of the year.
1684292896
#Fascinating #sandbox #detectives #fm4.ORF.at
