Shadows of Doubt is a head-scratching wonder of an immersive sim

You can’t have a good detective game without a good mystery, and Shadows of Doubt has plenty of them. The biggest one rattling around my brain right now, though, is This is a work of staggering ambition and no small amount of artistry, presenting an evocative, fully-functioning cityscape for you to explore, complete with several intricate systems underpinning your sleuthing. I’ve played 20 minutes and I’m simply staggered.

Shadows of Doubt: August 2019 Pre-Alpha Gameplay Watch on YouTube

So what exactly is it? Allow me to do the lazy journalist scum bit with a quickly-dashed-together comparison – Shadows of Doubt is like Thief in a trenchcoat and with a ketamine hangover. Okay, let’s put a bit more effort in – Shadows of Doubt is a first-person detective stealth game set in a procedurally-generated noirish city. The art-style is exquisite, a lo-grade pixellated affair that sits perfectly with the subject at hand. It’s fuzzy and gritty – the perfect texture for a detective thriller.

The tutorial level doesn’t reveal Shadows of Doubt’s full hand, but it does give a tantalising glimpse of it. You start off in your own bed, crawling out then fumbling through a fog of amnesia as you slowly rediscover your own apartment. There’s neat detail there, and a world that’s convincingly grounded – instead of finding on-the-nose diary entries, here you’ll just come across a tenancy agreement and a phone directory, the latter being put to use as you begin on the trail of a character whose case you’re on.