Shadows of Doubt News

Can you believe it's been one year since we’ve launched into early access, detectives?! Since then, you as a community have investigated and solved 1000’s of cases across the city with new ones rolling in everyday. Look at all these wild case boards!



The votes are in! We have also been doing polls during early access in our Discord to see how you all like to operate on the beat.

DID YOU KNOW:

• Detectives would kindly knock at your front door to ask questions.
  
• Detectives prefer to investigate in the dead of night.
  
• Detectives favorite beverage to have while cracking a case is coffee
  
• Detectives prefer homicide cases over all other types
  

Throughout Early Access, you have helped us shape Shadows Of Doubt into what it is now with your feedback and sharing of all your exciting and fun experiences.Last year we launched the first major free content update, Cheats & Liars. This introduced new case types like infidelity and stolen items, a new building, The Grand Hotel and new ways to interact with citizens.



What better way to celebrate our 1 year anniversary than with ANOTHER major free content update, The Sharpshooter Assassin. Released earlier this month, an all new type of killer, the sniper, has been introduced. Using bullet trajectory analysis and investigations of the Black Market dealers in the new and improved Fathoms district will prove very helpful in catching these snipers.



In addition to the sniper, you’ll now acquire social credit perks as you level that will give you an edge on your cases in a a variety of ways and even grant you access to a new location above the filth of the cities, The Echelons.

General Sam also released another fantastically themed video showcasing some of this new content along with a host of other grevious law breaking in his quest to stop crime. You can also now find some wonderful voice acting of theirs in game!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With more to come before our 1.0 launch this year along with console releases (FINALLY, we know you’ve been wanting it 🙂), we want to thank each and every detective who has been on the case throughout Early Access sharing your findings, exciting moments and giving us the feedback needed to continue to create an amazing detective sim experience for you all. Let’s all cheers up an ice cold Starch Kola or perhaps an Old Wheel Bourbon and celebrate what will be another exciting year for detectives and Shadows Of Doubt!

Hey detectives! Got a bunch of fixes for you related to the new Sharpshooter Assassin update below:

• New: TV show content!
  
• Sales ledgers and receipts now have a significant chance of spawning harder name tracing information (e.g. just initials, surname etc).
  
• Fixed: Photographic evidence is now accepted as proof of killer at a crime scene
  
• Fixed: Purchased safes should not longer display the incorrect popup window
  
• Fixed: Some issues with snipers trying to achieve impossible shots and waiting forever
  
• Fixed: Evidence printing issues
  
• Fixed: Taking a photo with the flashlight on is now working properly with save games
  
• Fixed: Lots of sounds were not pausing when the game was in a pause state
  
• Fixed: Pool ball shooting was broken
  
• Fixed: Shotgun sound was triggering once per pellet instead of per fire
  
• Fixed: AI could investigate your position while inside a ground level air duct, causing them to push the player out of it.
  
• Fixed: Crash when loading a game with the maximum number of open cases, and maxing out your social credit to initiate a retirement.
  
• Fixed: Player would fall through floor if they went underneath the very bottom of a stairwell
  
• Fixed: Missing building names for new buildings
  
• Fixed: The game could not generate a city info txt file from compressed city data
  
• Audio: Pursued notification replaced/updated
  
• Audio: Fixed hand-dryer roll-off behaviour
  
• Audio: New gramophone and jukebox music
  
• Audio: Slight reverb added to light and TV switches
  
• Audio: Replaced electronics room ambience
  
• Audio: Added live mixing of SFX tracks when music playing
  
• Audio: UI sounds mastered
  
• Audio: Numerous mix improvements
  
• Audio: Sentry gun rotation hydraulic added
  
• Audio: More item and weapon impact sounds
  
• Audio: New ‘new apartment’ notification sound
  
• Audio: Added a rummaging through bin sound (juicy!)
  
• Audio: Metal footsteps fixed
  
• Audio: Air ducts now mask exterior sound
  
• Audio: Air duct grills (in/out) now leak sound into ducts
  
• Audio: Air duct climb in/out foley
  
• Audio: Player crouching dampens their footsteps
  
• Audio: Coin impacts for different surfaces added
  

* Requires a new city generation to appear/spawn/see

Revealed during yesterday's Triple-i Initiative, procedurally generated detective sim Shadows Of Doubt largest update yet is playable right now. Dubbed "The Sharpshooter Assassin", the the patch introduces two new killer variants, both snipers who'll blast lead from vantage points around the city. And the city's expanding too, with new uber-rich gated communities as well as a contrasting shanty town. Not to mention a new auto-travel feature that lets you wander about these spots and attend to some casework without pausing the game.

Read more

We had a lot of positive things to say about the immersive sim Shadows of Doubt since its (sadly no-longer-available) demo arrived in early 2023, much of it comparing the game to Deus Ex—which, in case it's not clear, is very high praise indeed. Its voxel-based world grows bigger today with the release of the big new Sharpshooter Assassin content update, unveiled during today's Triple-I showcase, which adds a new type of killer for aspiring detectives to investigate and pursue...
Read more.

Hello detectives! It’s time for a new dev blog as it’s an exciting point in the year. As you may have seen from the Triple-i Initiative showcase; Shadow of Doubt will be coming to both PS5 and Xbox series S and X when we leave early access. Stay tuned on more info on that as the year progresses.

Not only that though, I’m excited to announce our first major content update of the year titled ‘Sharpshooter Assassin’ which launched today also. You can read the full list of changes here. This is the largest content update yet; the main focus of it is two new killer variants, both based on a killer that will kill from range. Prepare to study bullet trajectories to hunt down vantage points across the city! The goal behind this is to inject the main serial killer cases with more variety, and you’ll have to alter your detective approach a bit to accommodate these killer types.



Alongside that, there are two new building types; a mixed-use industrial building and the often-referenced-to-in-lore ‘Fathoms’ which is a kind of slum/shanty town. At the opposite end of the social class spectrum, we also have new gated communities found at the tops of skyscrapers, where land values are at their highest. You’ll need special access to visit here (well legally anyway). I hope you have fun exploring the new city geography!

In addition to this we have the introduction of social credit level perks. These have been on the cards for a while (previously the social levels were not used for anything apart from ending the game through retirement). Now each level has a small perk attached. I don’t want to spoil them all because I think they’re going to be fun to discover but I hope it gives new gameplay incentive and meaning towards gaining that precious social credit score.



There’s a bunch of other stuff in this update too, including reduced city generation time, steam cards and more but the last thing I’ll talk about here is the addition of an ‘auto travel’ feature. This is something I’ve wanted to put into the game for ages, but only now have found the time. The auto travel feature is a little like fast travel, but instead of teleporting to your destination, your character will automatically find their way to wherever you want to go.

Crucially, while auto travelling you can interact with your caseboard without pausing the game. Ever had it where you’re walking someplace and going over something in your head and not really putting much effort into the act of moving around as you know the route so well? This is trying to emulate that, kind of like a detective autopilot. It’s entirely optional of course, I expect some people to use it frequently and others to not, but it’s a feature I’m pretty pleased with. I also expect it could really help to make the game more approachable from an accessibility standpoint, or if you’re a player who is more interested in piecing together the case than physically moving throughout the world. There is a little bit of work left to do here as due to the variety of physical places the player can find themselves in, you can on occasion need to exit auto travel to guide the player yourself. Basic travel works pretty well though.



Auto travel options can be found in the location evidence window, with an additional toggle button found in the map interface.

As frequent players may have noticed, we’ve transitioned from pushing more frequent smaller patches to less frequent but larger patches. Expect this to continue going forward. Over the summer we’re going to have an increased focus on bug fixing, as well as improving controller support to get it up to a better standard. Until next time detectives!