Cashier serves me coffee, steamy hot but I wonder how long ago it was made because the Diner looks dead at this time of the day. I can’t complain, best price in town and open 24 hours. At least my hands are warm from holding the cup.

I make sure the cup lid is well fastened before heading up to the corkboard by the payphone. Locals pin odd jobs on those, from finding missing items to jealous partners looking for proof of cheating, and I could really use the money.

There are only ads pinned this time, mostly apartments I cannot afford for sale. Better check the board of another place, I open the map and take a sip of my coffee… something isn’t right.

Nausea kicks in, my vision blurs and I barely reach the bathroom in time to throw-up.

No, I was not poisoned. Dumb me with this post purge clarity. Strapped for cash, I allowed them to install this disk on my body. They paid me five thousand Crows ahead but until my debt, plus some extra, is paid I am only able to consume Starch Kola products.

I clean the coffee stain out of my shirt as best as this watery soap allows, order 2 highly addictive Kolas and head to the next restaurant.

Half-way to my destination and the police scanner rings, a murder happened in an apartment a block away, gotta get there fast.

I am not kidding about the addiction, I run up the stairs licking the last of my Kola cans to reduce the jitters.

So close, but too late - the security door is down and the second floor inaccessible. No one goes in or out until the enforcers arrive, or someone inside disables it.

Only once this lockdown was useful and kept the killer inside. That time, as he opened the rolling steel door I could see his bloodied shirt and hands before I saw his remorseless face. Most of the time it would only prevent me reaching the crime scene before the enforcers.

Enforcers are enforcers, what can I say, they are hammers looking for nails. They contaminate the crime scene marching around and you surely don’t want to be caught by them in there. Sometimes it is better to wait for them to leave and let the trail go cold than be the nail sticking up. But not this time. I have been here before.

The fourth floor hall has an air duct, that, if my calculations are correct, can drop me somewhere in the second floor behind the security door. I rush up in hopes the thick steel door will delay the enforcers enough so I can get untainted clues.

Navigating the air ducts was easier than I thought. I went two levels down, and found an exit by the victim’s bathroom in seconds.

As I drop on top of the toilet seat I see her dead body on the shower floor, water running and rinsing her blood down the drain.

I get close and notice the bullet hole on the shower glass wall, I look through it and pinpoint another bullet hole on the window. I smile.

Usually sniper cases are hard to solve, there are no fingerprints or traces of the murder on the crime scene. You need to check the victim’s whole life, where they have been, if they had beef with anyone, if there are any indications of a stalker, check black market for weapons sale, it can take a lot of time until you find something concrete. But here I had this big arrow connecting the holes and pointing to the criminal, right across the street, specifically at the apartment 305 of the Novák House building.

I confirm the wound on the victim, probably from a deer hunter rifle, time of death about 30 min to 1 hour ago, more or less. It is hard to say with the shower helping with the blood flow.

My skin gets antsy, I lose my balance and fall butt first on the wet shower floor. The Kola addiction shows her face again.

I dry myself to prevent another fall and look for some Kola in the kitchen, maybe I can find some here. I can hear the security door opening and the enforcers marching, they are not discreet about it.

The jitters are not helping me. The enforcers hear my scavenging noises in the kitchen and press they efforts to get in. I grab the Kola from the fridge and run stumbling to the bathroom. As the front door bursts open I only catch a glimpse of a big black boot before I try to reach for the air duct. I guess they also catch a glimpse of me, as they recklessly open fire.

Miraculously I am unscathed by those salvos. In the air duct I drain the Kola then follow my way out to the fourth floor as fast as I can. From there I leave the building, avoiding security cameras and defence turrets just in case they think I am the killer.

Before I head to the Novák House, I stop at a vending machine. The prices are not as good as the Diner, but I don’t want to risk another withdrawal when things get ugly. I stack up on Kola and go check the snipers’ nest.

At the apartment 305’s door, I finish another can of Kola. There is no sign of breaking in, either the killer lives here or has access to the place. I knock on the door first to be safe. A cheerful, barrel-chested man opens the door. He happily answers all my questions, it seems he just arrived from work, but is not comfortable with me coming in to take a look at the place.

He gently closes the door on me. I am pretty confident something is wrong about this place and I am not risking another withdrawal burst, so I kick open that door before he can use the lock, knocking unconscious the rotund man.

To my surprise, he was not alone. The loud noise his head makes when it hits the door alerts his wife, who comes to his aid. We struggle for a bit but I am able to handcuff her. For safety, I do the same to the husband on the floor while the woman curses.

Now inside, I can easily see a hunting rifle laying by the window with a perfect view to the victim’s bathroom. I scan the weapon for fingerprints, and locate a spent case nearby. The shot was indeed taken from here.

The fingerprint was not from the husband, but from the wife. Notes of the victim’s routine and crumbled papers about unrequited love litters the living room floor with the woman’s handwriting style.

I am not interested in their reasoning, I have enough to finish the paperwork and turn in the case. The enforcers can take care of the suspects from here on and the city can sort them out.

Only a handful more cases like this and I can finally remove that damn Starch Kola disk.

The Game

Shadows of Doubt is a sandbox retro noir cyberpunk detective sim game developed by ColePowered Games and published by Fireshine Games, it is out of early access on September 26, and it runs great on Linux with proton.

I got this game past Steam Summer Sale and it was worth every penny even in its early access stage. Despite many bugs, the game core is solid and very enjoyable if you like solving puzzles.

The story above happened in one of my game sessions and illustrate many of the mechanics you will experience in Shadows of Doubt, plus some embellishments my brain did to fill the blanks - I really like and there is room for my own interpretation and role-play in games.

The setting of the game is some sort of retro futuristic cyberpunk noir full of anachronisms. You can install upgrades on your body in the form of disks and use a sci-fi machine to scan important clues, but if you need someone address you will need an old school phone book, often found in peoples houses or by payphones around the city.

Mega-corporations control everything, hyper-industrialization polluted the world to a point where everything is flooded and people live in condensed little islands across the globe.

When you start the game, it generates a small city with fully explorable streets and buildings - if you see a building with +10 floors you will be able to enter every floor, find a way into every single room, and open drawers, cabinets, safes or wardrobes.

It also populates with hundreds, thousands, depending on the size of your city, of unique NPCs. Varying on how they look like, what they dress, where they live, their possessions, working hours, relationships, fingerprint and the list goes on. This living web will go through their day with or without you, sandbox sim style.

The game is 3D, voxel/pixel art with lots of neon over industrial architecture. You play in first person, free to roam around as you like, and able to interact with almost everything in the world: from removing light bulbs to grabbing litter from the streets. Similar to the original Deus Ex, objects in focus will be highlighted and options with correspondent key press will be displayed.

The world itself feels alive, from the change in weather to the background music atmosphere. There were some small things that helped my immersion a lot, like the atmosphere feeling grimmer when a murder was about to happen, or just the different TV programs going on every time you enter a murder scene.

Once in a while a NPC will murder another, and, as everything in the city is private, you can investigate it for some cash and social credit. You use cash to purchase anything around the city, and social credits give you perks like being able to enter areas reserved for high-class citizens. Reaching the max social level allows you to retire to The Fields, a pristine natural environment with higher degree of freedom - at least it is what they say, no one ever came back from there or returned messages.

The styles of murders are diverse: sniper, serial killer, cult; with different weapons, reasons and clues left behind.

Every case you take will create “case board” where you can pin information: people, items, clues and your notes. For example, when you inspect the victim, you have the option to pin their photo in the case board. Then everything else you inspect on the body, and you pin to your board will be automatically connected to that photo, like the type of wound, time of death and fingerprint. Every other detail of the person, like shoe size or eye colour, will be updated on the photo.

If you never saw that person before, the name on the photo will be “unknown” until you figure it out who is that person. Usually by exploring their house, workplace or inspecting their wallet for their ID.

As you explore the crime scene you will find clues about suspects, like footprints, fingerprints, blood, weapons and bullet holes. In the absence of those you will need to be more creative, look for contacts, victim’s notes, workplace, places they walk by or have been, ask the neighbours.

Some clues are time-sensitive, footprints fade away very fast, if you need to get in after the enforces you will miss them for sure, and video from security cameras refresh on a 24-hour rotation.

You can talk to people, show them pictures of suspects or victims, bribe them for their favour. Sometimes you can bribe a suspect so they allow you to investigate their house - what is a bit weird but effective if you don’t want to fight.

Eventually, you will have enough info in your case board to identify the killer.

To close a murder case, you just need to identify the assassin’s name. But you get extra rewards by finding the murder weapon, their address, and, if you are brave enough, arresting them.

You do all that while also need to manage your needs, for food, drink, sleep. There are plenty of bonuses when you are well-fed and rested. And depending on what you eat or drink, you can have serious side effects. You also have to manage your smell, another way people can detect you. You might need a shower after investigating trash cans or sewage.

The first cases can feel fresh and exciting, you scan everything you can, get every detail pinned on your board. Eventually, you will run through all those types of cases, and you will know what to look for in each case. If you see your victim in a ritual circle of they own blood, you know it is a Cultist Reaper and the type of clue they leave behind. The same goes to the odd jobs you can get from the bulletin boards around town. That is when the freshness fades away and the game starts feeling like a job, but not in a negative sense, more like doing those daily newspaper puzzles that you are already good at.

I usually retire to The Fields when I have enough social credit, and start a new game in a fresh city. Mostly because of the bugs accumulating in my city. Things you need would appear between walls or clipped into other objects, making it impossible to progress without reloading the game to a save before you accepted that job. Odd jobs clients would get stuck on a chair, and never leave, hindering some investigations. Loading a game would make sniper holes disappear. Merchants would never go to their shops, preventing you from buying specific products.

This one time, I put a tracker on the black market disk merchant who would never leave his house. After several days, I was notified of a murder, open the map so I can figure out where do I need to go and voilà, he was in the victim’s house, far away from both his apartment and business.

Also, the randomness of the events does not help with the odd jobs. Once someone requested me to steal documents from a person, the only information they gave me about the target was the foot size, eye colour and wear glasses. Kind of ridiculous for this kind of request.

There is a method to most of those cases, usually the target is close to the client’s daily routine, and you expand the radius of your search from there. I gave up after searching every single person from the requester home building, from their office building, from the buildings with his company’s competitors, and people transiting between them, there were only two matching the description and none had the document anywhere. It did not help that the client was stuck on a bench close to the park, preventing me from following his whereabouts.

A few cases later, I opened the tab for this request, and the name had changed from unknown to the target’s name. I imagine I bumped into them at some point and learned they name. To make matters worse, the avatar of the NPC did not match the description that was in the file.

This “name auto-update” mechanic is a bit annoying because it updates even if you do not have anything concrete, there were many people around the city that matched the description.

That means that for every case, if I talk to enough people around the city, eventually I will have all the details out of the bat. If you want to avoid these ridiculous requests, do not take the odd jobs that pays most. For everything else you get more concrete details, like a location, profession or a name.

“Steal this document, it belongs to someone with blue eyes”.

Coming out of Earlier Access does not mean it is safe from bugs. There are still a lot to do. It appears that this release is just to match with the release for consoles.

As I said before, even with the frustrating bugs, I had a great time with the game. And I imagine most will be sorted out over time.

Steam Deck

The game is verified on Steam Deck and with positive ProtonDB reviews. It runs great with the default settings (FPS limiter at 30) but it drains the battery fast. Indoors, I got 30 FPS and around 12W TDP. Going outside during a raining night, the frame rate dropped a bit here and there and the TDP went above 20W. You can tweak a bunch of settings to your taste to extend the battery life.

The controller settings work well and has some nice shortcuts to interact with things nearby. My only complaint is the default button to drag documents in the board view, it is the analog click with the same analog you use to move.

I enjoy playing with my arms extended and relaxed, but I would often bring it close to my face, so I could read some text better, mostly the loading screen tips and the text in the case board. It would be great to have improved fonts, and font sizes for the Steam Deck.