I didn’t think there were many ways to make Shadows of Doubt a better detective game—aside from giving the whole thing a vigorous polish. ColePowered Games’ sleuthing simulator procedurally generates an entire city’s worth of crimes to solve, somehow creating genuine deduction puzzles out of a bucketful of random numbers. Granted, it also tends to create a lot of bugs and dead ends in the process. But when Shadows of Doubt works, it’s one of the best games ever made.
Yet the latest update somehow makes Shadows of Doubt even more conceptually appealing, by letting you play as a detective who is also a rat. The modifiers update injects a bunch of optional mutations into the sim’s algorithmic genes, one of which lets you prowl its rain-slicked alleys as a trenchcoat-wearing rodent.
Simply titled “rat detective”, the modifier shrinks your character down to a mere 10cm tall, letting you experience the powers and perils of being a city-dwelling rodent. The advantage of being a rat detective is you can climb on walls and ceilings, and sneak past people more easily. The downside is that you can’t question people, and citizens may even be hostile to your presence.
I gave the rat detective modifier a quick spin earlier today, and it immediately adds a different flavour to Shadows of Doubt. While a few people in the street were sympathetic to my presence, when I scurried up to a bunch of people warming themselves around a burning barrel, they immediately started trying to stomp on me, yelling things like “disgusting rat!”.
I clawed my way up the side of a building to get away, but you can only ascend so far (this is rat mode, not Spider-Man mode). Cornered on the top of a dumpster, eventually I had to leap back down to the street and dash for an alley to escape.
Rat detective is far from the only modifier the update adds. Another standout is “Snail Nemesis”. Apparently inspired by the “immortal snail” meme by Gavin Free, this makes your detective impervious to all damage, except for being touched by a tiny snail that pursues you throughout the city. I like to think of it as Terminator mode, although that makes me pine for an open-world Terminator game, so maybe don’t think about it like that.
Other modifiers include a classic Ironman mode that deletes your save if you die, a house arrest scenario that makes it a crime for you to leave your in-game home, a “gambling debt” option that starts you off with a big bank balance, but an even bigger debt to a loan shark that you must pay off in instalments or risk being confronted by debt collectors. Finally, the film noir toggle desaturates the screen for a classic sleuthing experience.
It’s worth noting that the modifiers are not mutually exclusive. You can play with all of them switched on if you want, which sounds incredibly appealing and explosively chaotic. Indeed, some might argue Shadows of Doubt needed less chaos in its systems, not more, so I should mention the update also fixes a bunch of bugs and mechanical issues. It adds a cooldown timer to muggers so they won’t repeatedly inspect your wallet, and ensures loan sharks will fight players when you fail to pay them on time.
These fixes arrive on top of multiple quality-of-life patches released earlier this year, including updates issued in June and April. All told, if you drifted away from Shadows of Doubt after launch, now might be the perfect time to give your gumshoes another airing.
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