Filtered through the eyes of a private investigator, your primary goal is always one of information rather than domination – an ethos that is humorously embodied by the game’s approach to guns while you can equip a gun, you can only use it to whack things. The procedural nature of Shadows of Doubt is a valuable assets, because it’s a game less interested in you becoming the master of a space, and more interested in you actually inhabiting and discovering it. Not only is every world in Shadows of Doubt completely unique, but even if you were to play through the exact same world twice, it would still be a different experience. Very little outside a tutorial is created ‘by hand.’ Not only that, but the procedural generation also applies to the systems of the game, with each novel mission and case cascading off one another.

What’s particularly notable about all of this, is that everything – the locations, the people, who they are, and how they interact – is procedurally generated by the game.

Knowing this, you might walk by someone heading up the stairs in your building, when a thought crosses your mind: Who was that? Do they live here? And why are they walking up the stairs at 3am?Įverybody is Somebody in Shadows of Doubt. The simulation drills down on their hair, skin tone, gender, jobs – even going as deep as their fingerprints, their blood type, their shoe size. They eat, sleep, go to work, hang out, and generally interact with the world in their own ways. Not only that, every person inside those apartments is simulated as well. Every apartment is inhabited, every work desk matches up with an employee, and every shop sells its own wares. A handful of streets are lined with buildings that reach for the stars, filled with apartments, office spaces, shops, elevators, ventilation, security systems, mailboxes – all of it. Shadows of Doubt gives you this small but extremely dense city to wander around in. Do you break down the door with guns blazing, or sneak in through the vent? Perhaps something different altogether? Image: GamesHub This is often embodied through the lens of Immersive Sim games like Deus Ex and System Shock, where the player is given multiple options on how to approach any given goal. The benefit of the single city block idea is that it will let you approach objectives in any way of your choosing. Traditionally, this would be achieved through meticulously handcrafted scenarios – game designers create a space, think up the possible ways players may want to approach it, and then create bespoke options to account for each of them.

Cast heavy shadows of doubt