Shadows of Doubt modding tools will let you build cities and write your own murder mysteries

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.

The update in question is slated for early December release, and consists of three major elements. It’ll add a text editor, which you can use to write citizen chatter and v-mails, with dialogue triggered based on traits and the situation. It’s apparently pretty much the same tool the developers themselves use to add text to the game.

They’re also working on a city editor. Initially it will just allow you to rename cities and streets, and decide where to place buildings, but Colepowered Games “hope to expand it in the future”. Watch out, Cities: Skylines 2!

Last but not least, the developers are working on a “mono” version of Shadows of Doubt, specifically for modders, that will be available on a separate Steam branch. They’ve broken it off from the default branch because the moddable version has “slightly lower performance”.

The update will also include “a few other things coming unrelated to mods that we have been working on that we will keep secret for now”. Oh, and Steam Achievements.

Not too shabby, Colepowered. Keep it up and we’ll have to add you to Emily Short’s feature on the best detective games, which admittedly dates back to 2016, and isn’t so much a list of recommendations as an engrossing interactive fiction deep dive.