Just one more thing.
I hope you don’t mind if I get a little frank with you here.
I’ve struggled to write this piece onShadows of Doubtfor several days.
The various descriptors which have been given to Shadows of Doubt had me scratching my head though.
It’s certainly a detective game.
The game doesn’t hold your hand while you solve cases.
It’s up to you to collect evidence and figure out who the culprit is.
The in-game pinboard where all your evidence hangs will automatically create connections between linked items.
There’s a wonderful freedom to your approach in solving cases.
you’re free to break in, after a series of increasingly loud knocks.
If someone’s inside, you’ve got the option to try bribing them.
Frustratingly, you might only ask a specific set of questions.
Outside of solving cases, I found it extremely fun to explore the world.
I love this gameplay loop, but at the same time I rarely felt engaged with it.
Everything within the world feels formulaic, and perhaps this is the trade-off with procedural generation.
Citizens respond to questions with the same answers.
Homes rarely feel personal, often decorated with a TV and shelves of assorted books.
There’s little consequence to the world or your actions in it.
I could re-enter the building Scot-free and no one remembered the chaos from a minute ago.
Likewise, your approach to solving cases has no effect on the outcomes.
But every generated city has the same Asian iconography perpetuated in cyberpunk.
Random jumbles of Japanese, Chinese and Korean writing put together on signs.
Paper lanterns line some streets, while others randomly have Chinatown arches placed there.
As I walk around the different cities the game has generated, all I can think is: why?
Why do these all exist here?
Why is there nothing stereotypically French or Italian lining the streets?
Kaizen-6, with its Japanese name, founded by someone with a common Korean surname.
The more you look, the more you see it.
On paper, I should be absolutely enamoured with Shadows of Doubt.
But despite a fun gameplay loop, none of its parts seem to click together well.
But for a game with so much literal substance to it, it felt ironically reductive in its experience.
