SHADOWS OF DOUBT

An endless Deus Ex that could become a stone-cold classic

- Joshua Wolens

Everything pointed to Li Li Qiao. It was her husband splattered across the kitchen floor, her fat, wet thumbprint on the hilt of the blade that lay next to him, and her blood-caked size 12 boots that had traipsed tremulously out the door not long after the crime was committed.

Her associates backed it all up: a chat with the neighbours revealed she’d been seen emerging from the apartment in a state of visible distress around 7pm, smack-bang in the middle of the period that my cursory field forensics told me was the time the murder took place. When I visited her office, I was told she failed to turn up to work the next day, and she hadn’t returned since.

One coworker said they’d seen her haunting a nearby bar, though, and after quietly breaking into its security room via a well-placed air vent, I was able to ID her in the surveillance footage: drunk, scared and with a guilty conscience only drink could quiet. I just had to buy a beer and wait for her to turn up again. When I slapped the cuffs on, it didn’t even feel like a victory. Just a full stop at the end of a short, sad story. You can imagine my consternation when it turned out Li Li Qiao had committed no crime at all.

AMATEUR SLEUTH

Shadows of Doubt, which has just been released in Early Access, had led me up the garden path. The murder of Matthew Parker – Qiao’s unfortunate husband – was just another in a line of crimes that the game had procedurally generated as I explored its world. The victims selected and evidence scattered according to an algorithm, red herrings and all.