Shadows of Doubt News

Hey detectives! We've got a new update out on the experimental branch now! You can find details on how to access it here if you haven't used the experimental branch before!

• Fixed: Added dynamic font atlases for support of various non-ENG characters not in the game’s text files
  
• Fixed: Apartment numbers on doors could appear inverted/backwards
  
• Fixed: It was possible to generate multiple cities with the same name, seed and size if they were generated by different versions of the game. This caused save games to potentially load the wrong city, resulting in a lot of weird things happening on load-in.
  
• Fixed: Possible error with citizens choosing which weapon to use
  
• Fixed: You can now always talk to handcuffed people, even if trespassing
  
• Fixed: Picking up a placed door wedge resulted in the creation of a ‘used’ one
  
• Fixed: The commercial oven door now opens downwards instead of to the left
  
• Fixed: The modern kitchenette oven doors opened inwards instead of outwards
  
• Fixed: Hands are now interactable after knockout. (Printing and handcuff releasing was previously broken after a citizen was KO’d)
  
• Fixed: Microcruncher database apps do not launch blocking UI elements (Case board/Inventory)
  
• Fixed: Microcruncher database apps no longer listen to keyboard inputs when game is paused.
  
• Fixed: Microcruncher database app search text no longer “disappears” when players input long strings.
  
• Fixed: Interaction area with Microcruncher is now bigger and properly includes the screen.
  
• Fixed: Not being able to print V-mails if you scrolled past the listed page they were on.
  
• Fixed: Was possible for file boxes to spawn in air ducts, blocking player movement. Requires new city generation.
  

You can join the Discord here and sign up to our Fireshine Games Newsletter here.

Hey Detectives!

Today we have a bit of a rallying call! Nominations have just opened for The Steam Awards 2023, and we’d love your support! We’re exceptionally proud of the innovative gameplay Shadows of Doubt brings to the table and we hope we can count on your vote for the “Most Innovative Gameplay” category this year.

Shadows of Doubt is an incredibly ambitious game that typifies what indie gaming is all about - creativity, innovation and risk taking. Cole has really taken an idea and pushed the boundaries of the detective genre. Taking an immersive simulation approach where the whole world is constantly simulated, you can interact with almost everything and explore everywhere gives the player unprecedented agency in a detective game. The procedurally generated cases and lack of linear progression again diverge so significantly from most detective games giving players a unique and refreshing experience. It is a project 7 years in the making due to the complexity of the overlapping systems and is something everyone involved in the project is extremely proud of what has been achieved so far and there is still a lot more to come on this front!

We have also had a whole bunch of high praise from the press on this front:

• RockPaperShotgun - “Shadows Of Doubt is like no other detective game I've played, and although its murder mysteries have left me spiraling, I've had an absolute riot playing it.”
  
• GamesIndustry.biz - “It's the agency, combined with the indie game's scope and ambition, that convinced GamesIndustry.biz to select it as the winner of UKIE's UK Game of the Year prize at Gamescom”
  
• PC Gamer - “Shadows of Doubt is one of the most interesting games I've seen in years”
  
• GamesHub - “It’s one of those experiences you’ll find yourself shouting about from the rooftops – ‘You have to try this. Trust me.’”
  
• GodIsAGeek - “I’ve never played anything like Shadows of Doubt before”
  

There has also been some amazing sentiment on this front from creators here if you want to hear more reasons for why you should consider nominating Shadows of Doubt for the Most Innovative Gameplay Steam Award:

• NerdCubed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YaQnKtUk2U
  
• CallMeKevin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFwdf-hohoI
  
• TheEscapist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdI98aZ1xYc
  
• Insym - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbnfLnoWDNA
  
• ManyATrueNerd - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zahYywUDvD8
  

If you can help spread the word to your friends, your grandparents, your favourite influencer and the internet at large we would really appreciate it!

Immersive sims are a strange genre. Ultra influential, utterly beloved, but relatively thin on the ground. They're a delicate instrument: a difficult thing to get right and even when you nail it, certainly nowhere near as lucrative as your live-service whatevers and open-world thingummies. So every time we get a new one—and it's actually good—it feels like a bit of an event, as was the case when procgen detective sim Shadows of Doubt hit early access in April...
Read more.

Shadows of Doubt is the voxel-based 1980s detective sim in which the glass is always rain-slicked, the coffee as bitter as the human soul, and the whodunnits, procedurally generated. Hard-nosed private eye Rachel (RPS in peace) pronounced herself fascinated but a little stumped by it, back in April, while Graham described it as his "ideal game" in a post about the recent addition of infidelity cases and lost-and-found jobs, adding to my suspicions that Graham is some kind of jigsaw killer and that his news posts are actually ciphered confessions of his terrible crimes.

Well, these already viscous plots are about to thicken into a borderline-immobile soup of intrigue, for ColePowered Games are adding modding tools to the game. These will allow you to pen your own detective mysteries, and even alter the surrounding city to fit.

Read more

Good day, detectives and welcome back to another Shadows of Doubt round-up! This week we wanted to give you a little update on the modding update and touch on more of your personal stories and experiences you’ve had in the procedural cities solving your cases.

[h3]An Update on the Modding Update![/h3]

We are currently aiming to have the update ready for early December. Before then we may look to share the modding tools with some of the dedicated Shadows of Doubt modding community to make sure it all works and to check if there is anything else we should implement. If you would be interested in this please do join our Discord and take on the "Crunchers" role.

Now for a bit more detail on what is coming with the update. The update consists of 3 main elements:

• A text editor tool - which you can use to add new text to the game for new citizen chatter, conversations, v-mails and more. Different dialog can be triggered based on citizen traits and situation. This is actually what we use to get text in the game.
  
• An in-game city editor - for now this will only give you the ability to rename buildings and streets and decide where you want to place the buildings but we hope to expand it in the future
  
• A mono build - we are going to make a mono version of the game available on a separate open Steam branch so that players can mod the game to their heart's desire. The mono version willl have slightly lower performance so we didn't want to put it on the default branch but hopefully you will be able to have some fun with it.
  
• There will also be a few other things coming unrelated to mods that we have been working on that we will keep secret for now
  
• Finally - we will also be implementing Steam achievements as well! We can't wait for you to have fun with these.
  

[h3]Now onto your stories![/h3]

Being that Shadows of Doubt tends to be very unique (and sometimes absolutely wild) with every new playthrough and new city, you’d be surprised at the things we’ve seen and probably the things you’ve seen yourselves…

So let’s sit around the diner booth, have a Starch Kola and reminisce on some notable moments shared by you!



Have you ever been so hot on the case that you witnessed an attempted murder?

Twitter user @n0valith has. And on top of that, was able to apprehend the killer before they had a chance to claim their next victim. Well done! See the full video here: Catching them in the act.



How about THINKING you’re hot on the case until you realize you’ve broken into the wrong facility after hours to investigate a potential murderer. @pixlBandits has some first hand experience to share with you: Oops wrong place.



We suppose you could ignore all of these kind of situations if you just go ahead and take EVERYBODY out of the City Hall database. Reddit user u/Kijora_The_Duck did just that when they said “Government Who?”



That’s it for this week, detectives! Keep on the case, and keep sharing your sleuth experiences with us…we might investigate YOU next!