![]() ![]() Alas, it was not we who had escaped them, but rather they who had hidden in the darkness only to reappear suddenly and dramatically at storytelling time. We escaped them only when it became dark, initially a matter of pride at our doing, but as soon as we sat by the fireside, they were back. On moonlight nights they were there, walking behind us, in front of us, besides us, mocking our failure to turn them into captives. Let us carry a load on our heads, in our hands, on our backs or drive a wheel, our shadows would come up with exact replica. They followed us, doing whatever we did, literally at the same time and speed that we did it. They would run away from us, but annoyingly kept the same speed as we did, accelerating when we did, slowing down when we did, and stopping when we did. With the grim but eager determination of bounty hunters, we set out to capture our shadows. vĪ rivalry of sorts grew into a sibling race to be the first to achieve the feat. Older by a year, I was not about to admit that I was any less able. If Shadows of Doubt manages to achieve even half of what it's setting out to do it's going to be something very special indeed.Njiniü, my younger brother claimed he could catch his own shadow. These are but slivers of the ideas being explored in Shadows of Doubt, and the current demo is but a small sketch that hints at what's finally going to be implemented - take a look at one of developer Cole Jeffries development videos and you'll have some idea of what's going to be possible. Each knock on the door will get a little louder and intimidating, while your own case board you can pull out at any time can have various items of evidence and points of interest pinned together in a complex lattice of your own design. There's a real lived-in beauty to Shadows of Doubt's cities.īack on the case as you try and infiltrate an apartment there's typical stealth trappings - air vents can be used to get easy access, while locks are there to be picked - while Shadows of Doubt also has its own little quirks. Outside there's a world of bars with broken neon signs, where inside you can quiz the bartenders or ask to see their records. ![]() ![]() People stick to their own schedules, and even on the way down from your room you'll see signs of a world that's alive and lived in - there's grubby wallpaper in apartment lobbies, where you can take dark stairways and brush against some of the city's citizens or catch a ratchety old lift. Their own apartment is a handful of blocks away, and on the journey between the two you discover how convincing Shadows of Doubt's procedurally-generated streets are. 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. You start off in your own bed, crawling out then fumbling through a fog of amnesia as you slowly rediscover your own apartment. The tutorial level doesn't reveal Shadows of Doubt's full hand, but it does give a tantalising glimpse of it. It's fuzzy and gritty - the perfect texture for a detective thriller. The art-style is exquisite, a lo-grade pixellated affair that sits perfectly with the subject at hand. 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. 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. I've played 20 minutes and I'm simply staggered. The biggest one rattling around my brain right now, though, is how is this possible? 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. You can't have a good detective game without a good mystery, and Shadows of Doubt has plenty of them. You can find more details on exactly what's going on over here, and we'll be bringing you more write-ups over the coming days. We're taking Rezzed online over the next few days, presenting sessions and bringing you highlights of what's new and interesting in the world of independent games. ![]()
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