Shadows of Doubt Fingerprint-All

Solve crimes by occasionally committing a few on your own. Find more fingerprints than in a Phasmophobia-like horror game. Get super drunk. Discuss all your procedurally generated investigations here, though you may want to spoiler tag some things as there is a lot of things you end up finding out on your own.

Steam store page.

Tagging for when this is a little less janky!

Steam link btw

Yes, I might come back to it. I haven't really clicked with it yet. I started the tutorial again and ballsed up the cops kicking the door down slightly by getting into the air vent, but I still ended up in an unfamiliar, dark apartment, in the bedroom, and had to punch out the woman who lived there.

I think I'm missing some basic tricks to deal with things. I reloaded and found that the lady in there didn't wake up if I just used my torch and went straight for the front door.

Kiera Stewart wasn't home this time to tell me who the murderer was. This time when I'm going to the killer's place, should I be lying in wait for them to come back? Do people mooch around until the apartments are empty?

I think if the victim is killed in their apartment and they have a partner, the partner essentially becomes unhoused and wanders around the edges of the city.

I enjoyed my time with this right after release. I think I have hit 10 or more hours so far. I'll probably reroll a city and start over when I do decide to hop back in.

The procedurally generated world creates some of the allure for me. I also haven't burned out as quickly as I have with other proc genned environments in the past. It's fun to see how information on citizens accumulates with time.

Me waiting for the killer to get home from work: "Gee, she's taking her sweet time. I wonder where she's... "

* NEW MURDER! *

Me: "That better be a new killer."

Me, later: "Dammit."

Also a thing I learned today is that a basement level in a building, possibly yours, can flood with sewage and give you the "Stinky" trait before you can blink.

Basements are still a mystery to me. I tracked down someone there once, and there was a lot more going on down there than I had imagined. Just the tip of the iceberg, which I'm sure I will get into even more once I start putting time in again.

How do folks feel about this easily accessible info source? Spoilered as I know there were folks asking for the devs to lock it down.

Spoiler:

On the third floor of City Hall(4th level), there's a city computer that isn't behind cameras or alarm systems. Just plug in any name and you are instantly provided with fingerprints, etc. I tried avoiding it for some time, but found my resolve weak and ended up tapping into it a time or two.

Spoiler:

It's not a magic bullet as you can only search by name, but yes, almost everything you need to know about someone is contained there. Critical exceptions include place of work, telephone, and passcode.

Ok, I'm slowly easing back in. I'm going with a much larger map this time.

Getting back in reminded me of where I stopped on my last save. I had a murder i was investigating and the corpse was shoved inside a cabinet under the counter. Part of the head was clipping through the countertop. I couldn't figure out how to analyze the body. I tried triggering the context command by looking at every exposed piece of the body I could get near to, but no dice. I even crawled into the cabinet and tried to get it to trigger, but still no luck. This wasn't my first body clipped through a wall either. Definitely needs some more time in the oven, but I enjoyed my time before and here I am playing again.

Clipping and collisions definitely should be the top priority in bug fixing.

Josh of "Lets Game It Out" did a video with this game

If you've never watched one of his videos, he takes to janky games and sandboxes, finds weird bugs/behaviors and just sees what kind of mayhem can happen. This is why it takes about 20 minutes for him to actually start investigating a crime.

I just bought a new apartment, mainly because I had to arrest the super of my last apartment building for being a double murderer.

Rat Boy wrote:

I just bought a new apartment, mainly because I had to arrest the super of my last apartment building for being a double murderer.

Just when you think you're getting to know someone...

So you can, if you're very lucky, witness a murder happen. Obviously it's a million to one shot unless you've already or almost identified a killer from a previous case. For example, I had narrowed down a list of suspects to one person, happened to run into them on the streets and tailed them when they starter running around seemingly at random. Running and pausing every few minutes to catch her breath. She entered a building, ran up the stairs, lost me by clipping through a wall on a particular floor, and murdered her second target.

As an aside, I think the game starts falling apart late after you've catalogued basically every person's fingerprint pattern in the city. Murder cases get solved instantly if they've left a print behind; on the occasions they don't, the cases take forever and sometimes only solvable after the killer strikes again. Thankfully in the hours I've played so far it seems the game makes the killer get sloppier and print evidence easier to obtain. There has to be some other evidence to tie a killer to a crime scene that I can't figure out or hasn't been implemented yet. I've tried using surveillance footage but the game won't accept it.

At this point I'm just running through my current playthrough without retiring just to see what happens as the city's population continually gets murdered and arrested.

Nothing suspicious about this guy at all:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/cqwhNsU.jpg)

I think I finally broke the game. It's February 14th and no one's been murdered in four days. All the people willing to do crimes have already been arrested, maybe?

If this man decides to kill someone, may God help us all:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/1hnSQol.jpg)

Rat Boy wrote:

I think I finally broke the game. It's February 14th and no one's been murdered in four days. All the people willing to do crimes have already been arrested, maybe?

Well given your avatar of the world's greatest detective, it was inevitable.

I still need to get to this game, but once I'm done with System Shock, Diablo IV and Tears of the Kingdom are waiting...

It still has a few rough patches, like for whatever reason the murders just stop happening or surfaces in the procedurally generated city not having collision.

New update called "Cheats & Liars" just released today. Main features are a new "Investigate Affair" side quest and a hotel building type.

it's also on sale for $16(US) I'm in! Just poking around for now. The tutorial pretty much guided me into getting shot by turrets which are apparently a thing Going in fairly blind. Ill have to try again tomorrow.

An update this last week added modding support and an in-game city map editor, so now you can run around a city whose layout makes sense. Or zero sense if you don't bother putting in a city hall.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/CMCkOCE.png)

Understatement of the year, Steam.

A new update added a few new things, chief among them a new murder type: snipers.

Spoiler:

My first attempt bugged out as it did not leave two pieces of evidence critical to the investigation: a bullet hole through the window and a bullet hole in the opposite wall. Both are needed to determine in which direction the shot was fired. Once the killer shot someone else, it did leave the needed evidence and I tracked the shooter down to a hotel across the street.

Version 1.0 released today, adding a kidnapping crime, crime scene clean up, and at last usable umbrellas.