Shadows Of Doubt review: a buggy yet brilliant detective sim of grand ambition

Criminally good

<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/shadows-of-doubt-review-header.jpg?width=690&quality=85&format=jpg&dpr=3&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“People walk the streets and warm themselves by a fire in Shadows Of Doubt. A “bestest best” sticker badge has been awarded to the game. - 1”>

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Fireshine Games

• Developer: ColePowered Games
• Publisher: Fireshine Games
• Release: Sept 26th
• On: Windows
• From: Steam
• Price: £20/$25/€25
• Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10

For years, a dangerous and charismatic game has evaded the grasp of many designers. Some say it doesn’t exist, that no publisher would ever back it. I’m talking about the one city block RPG that Warren Spector has often mentioned. Sure, we’ve seen a few usual suspects already - Deus Ex Mankind Divided , Disco Elysium , even Else: Heart.Break - they all grimace in the line-up but nothing ever sticks. Now, out of the gloom of indie development, comes another perp ready to have his mugshot taken. Shadows Of Doubt is an open world detective sim that comes perilously close to being our guy. Its clothes, stature, gait, and fingerprints match the description of what Spector often describes. And yet, if you tilt your head, something is just a little off. The game isn’t confined to one block. It’s not an RPG precisely . And its simulation has plenty of bugs, jank, and unintentional comedy. But after all this time, in the absence of a smoking gun, shouldn’t we just put this guy in the slammer and call the case closed? I say yes, let’s. Officers! Arrest this game, it’s brilliant.

Shadows Of Doubt is not only a simulation of a fully working, sleeping, and murdering city, but also a simulation of the paperwork and footwork required to solve those murders. It generates a whole city and sends its countless citizens around on their day-to-day routines: work, home, the bar, a diner, the local arms dealer in a grotty basement. You know, normal stuff. As a result, it is complex, ambitious, sometimes broken, often funny, and limited by its own lofty goals. I’m very smitten with it.

You play a private detective who walks the streets, sometimes accepting small time investigations (side quests) to recover lost items or find missing persons. But mostly taking on longer murder cases. Bodies are often found in their own apartments and it’s up to you to find out what happened.

What this looks like, in videogamey terms, is a first-person walkabout in which you pick up a lot of items, wondering if they’re clues or not, and glaze a lot of surfaces with a fingerprint scanner. Much of your time is spent looking at a corkboard (a screen you can summon at any time) where you can pin information, like a gurning butterfly collector. A photo of the victim, a phone number that called that fateful night, a letter he was sent by an insurance company, a snapshot of the bullet casing found next to his corpse. Poor sap didn’t see it comin’.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Fireshine Games

This case board is the first sign that the game is secretly about what I’m going to call “fun drudgery”. There’s a lot of unglamourous paper shuffling. You routinely have to finger through employee records in an office (often by torchlight after breaking and entering). You’ll sift through paper contracts and computer files to check individual records for a clue on each person’s shoe size, or body type, or date of birth.

Even to “resolve” a murder, you have to fill in a form at the city hall. You’re asked for the name of the killer, their full address, a credible murder weapon, and proof they were present at the scene of the crime. This is the information around which your investigations orbit, the essential ingredients of a cracked case. It reminds me of board games more than video games, sharing the objectives of Cluedo, and the piecemeal information gathering of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.

So, a game of blood and paper. Sounds quite orderly as murder mysteries go. Perhaps it is, for some detectives. In my experience, as detective “Dick McClumps”, it’s often a wonderful Coen brothers farce.

My first case saw me visit a luxury high rise, where I was marked as “trespassing” just for dripping my raincoat on the marble hallway (you can get fined if you’re caught). I was in a haste to gather dirt on a person I suspected of buying a weapon on the black market. In my hurry, I broke into the wrong apartment. The suspect was next door. “That’s okay,” I thought as I realised my error. “There’s a vent shaft in this closet. I’ll adopt the usual immersive sim tactic, and crawl next door via the air ducts! Hah!”

Foolish McClumps. You see, Shadows Of Doubt doesn’t just offer a simple pre-designed path of venty tunnels between significant locations. This is a fully simulated city. All places may be significant. Ergo, the entire building has a vent network. Do you know how hard it is to find your way around inside a warren of identical metal tubes? Also, vent shafts on the 17th floor of a skyscraper are freezing , meaning a negative status effect that hinders your movement. I got so lost, I emerged into yet another innocent person’s home. They found me standing in their kitchen, shivering, and they chased me, like a cockroach, back into the vent. By the time I found my way back out into the building’s lobby, I decided to call this entire lead a write-off, and go warm myself by a barrel fire in the street.

Experientially, this whole sequence - a result of the game’s intertwining systems and commitment to simulation - was more interesting, funny, and unique-feeling than many first-person explorathons I’ve played in recent years. And all I did was pick the wrong lock and get lost in a vent. In terms of “emergent gameplay” Shadows Of Doubt is an incredible toy. It also fits into the quiet trend of “knowledge-based” games that encourage active learning as a means to progression, as opposed to “hey, you can double-jump now!” (Although there are biomechanical skill upgrades you can unlock).

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Fireshine Games

My role-playing of hapless investigator McClumps would continue. I found myself following a peculiar trail of milk cartons, deeply paranoid that someone should drink so much damned milk (it came to nothing - people just like dairy). I tracked down one killer and snuck into her home, creeping under her bed to look for the murder weapon. Suddenly, the killer’s partner came into the bedroom, climbed into bed, and started snoring. At any time you can check your watch to see the in-game time ticking by. I was stuck there for an hour.

That particular case ended in a round of fisticuffs - a rudimentary biffing mechanic that was absurd and hugely entertaining, yet definitely a type of movement the game doesn’t feel well-suited to. Inventory management and item use is likewise a fiddly, game-pausing affair of pill-swapping and lots of clicking on “drop/place” with inaccurate results. These foibles didn’t bother me so much, but I know it’ll drive some people up the wall. I only appreciated how the limited inventory space would force me to make silly choices. At one point, I threw a revolver I’d confiscated into the river, just so I would have room in my pockets for a newspaper (you can use it to hide your face and it sometimes contains information about the murder cases you’re on).

<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/shadows-of-doubt-review-2.jpg?width=2048&height=2048&fit=bounds&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“The player reads a newspaper in the fog - an article about the “Red Demon” murderer - 11”>

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Fireshine Games

So there’s your fair warning: this is a fully simulated toy of murder mystery, but a slightly wonky one. Between its many systems, crossing one another like red string on a corkboard, lie a lot of weird, glitchy knots. While stealthing, people will lose sight of you or spot you without clear reason. While staking out apartments, I saw folks regularly come out of their homes and immediately re-enter, as if they all had the same habit of forgetting something. People in the street can be randomly sensitive to your presence, often accusing you of following them when you really couldn’t give a tuppenny shit. By contrast, office workers don’t care one jot if you occupy the same seat as them to use a computer while they’re already on it. I sat in the lap of a company receptionist, printing out employee records one after another. He said nothing, and I suspect he enjoyed it.

<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/shadows-of-doubt-review-4.jpg?width=2048&height=2048&fit=bounds&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“A suspect shouts “Jerk!” at the player, as they fist fight in an apartment. - 15”>

Some will fairly consider such jank a flaw in the simulation. Anyone complaining that 1.0 still feels a bit “early access” is justified. But, having smiled or laughed at many of the oddities, I feel many flaws are also part of the game’s ambitiously layered texture, the price to pay for a deeply complex and truly emergent game. You will run up against the limitations of the game’s world, absolutely. Emails will repeat, you will see patterns and murder types emerge, as if finally noticing a texture tiling into the distance. But for a game to be as anecdotally rich as this, I can forgive the repetition, the sight of its seams.

For a closing example, take chatting to NPCs. It’s a classic case of dialogue being more or less identical for every person in this world. You’re offered the same menu of questions to put to every person, and usually get the same variety of bottled, non-descript responses. This rings a bell. Mount and Blade ’s dialogue was similarly systematised, a vaguely human set of sentences and concerns that repeated themselves across all cultures and characters.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Fireshine Games

Just as I clicked through those samey menus seeking marriages and mercenaries, I eventually accepted the identikit witness testimonies of these cyberpunk citizens. Yet what I happily accept as a systematic (and funny) punchcard of chit-chat may snap the atmosphere in half for other players who crave a greater sense of humanity. The monolithic voice of the citizens can be an alienating force, a reminder that this is a machine, a sim, and not a living place. This is probably not the “one city block” game Warren Spector sorely seeks to detain, in other words.

Yet in all its clockwork detail, I admire it all the same. Buying into its world, bugs and all, has yielded the satisfaction of cases closed and the comedy of killings that completely stumped me. It took me 9 hours just to find the killer of the tutorial mission. For in-game days all I had to go on was an initial - A. Then for more hours, only a first name. After endless dud leads, dopey mishaps, and one bullet in the back by a security guard who found me snooping in her office, I finally found a surname and address for my suspect. I gasped a zealous “gotcha!” at my screen, and understood that something about Shadows Of Doubt felt special. It might not match the prints of the grail-esque single city block. But I think the immersive detective sim has found its first true killer.

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Shadows of Doubt

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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16 great Steam Next Fest demos to play first this February

Our top demo picks to get you started

Steam Next Fest is back with a veritable truck ton of fresh game demos to sample, and we’ve been plunging our eager little mitts into the latest batch of indie delights to unearth some handy recommendations for you to hit first. Running from now until February 13th, there are always oodles of demos to try in a Next Fest, so sometimes it’s nice to have a helping hand in working out what’s worth sinking your time into. Below, we’ve rounded up 16 of our favourites so far, and we’ll be writing about plenty more demos we’ve yet to try over the coming week.

Xenonauts 2

Hayden: Xenonauts 2 is a tough-as-nails split between base management and turn-based tactics that, like its predecessor, harkens back to the X-COMs of old. It’s an overwhelming game, and one that offers little guidance in learning how to defend the world from aliens. In fact, much of my time with the demo was spent getting slaughtered by them.

They might shoot your troops through a slim line of sight that you could never have predicted. They might get got by their own teammate, who knew they’d miss a shot but decided to go whole hog and commit anyway. My favourite death so far is a soldier whose name I didn’t even get a chance to learn, because they got shot on round one, went berserk, and blew themselves up with a grenade launcher. RIP… that guy.

But, even after it threw me out of the frying pan, clobbered me with it, doused me in oil, and chucked me into the fire of a UFO crash site, I came out with a wide grin. It’s tough. Really tough. These little troops barely stand a chance. But, after months of having superhero strength in Marvel’s Midnight Suns , that’s exactly what I need.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Mr Sun’s Hatbox

Katharine: One of this year’s IGF nominees for Excellence in Design, Mr Sun’s Hatbox is a game with an exceedingly daft premise - Mr Sun’s hatbox gets stolen by the dastardly Mr Moon - that’s executed to absolute perfection. Who are the other blobs with legs in Mr Moon’s employ? Doesn’t matter. All you need to worry about is bopping them on the noggin, nicking their headwear, and maybe fulton balloon-ing both them and their weapon back to your underground HQ Metal Gear Solid V -style so you can prepare for your big, end of level hat heist.

This is a platforming roguelike that feels both tightly controlled and wonderfully chaotic in the hands. With only a set number of fulton balloons at your disposal, you’ll be swapping hats and weapons throughout your run, chucking soup vats for springy punching gloves and baguettes for bow and arrows. It’s entirely unpredictable, and I absolutely love it. What’s more, each rotund blob dude you recruit has their set of randomized quirks and personality traits you’ll have to deal with too, which includes wigging out at the sight of corpses (of which there are many in a general run of Mr Sun’s Hatbox), and having a ‘skin condition’ where medkits actually hurts you. Honestly, I should have guessed from the name ‘Bandages’ Alvarez. Not all traits are bad, though. The more you level them up, the better they become, with my blob guys growing out of bad habits and into newer, more useful ones. Alas, the 20-odd minute demo in this year’s Next Fest doesn’t leave you a lot of room to get to know many of your round lads, but cor, what a great first impression all the same.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Shadows Of Doubt

Image credit:Fireshine Games

Ollie: Shadows Of Doubt is a game you should be interested in even if you don’t intend to play it. It’s a sandbox detective game where everything is procedurally generated, from the rain-soaked hyper-industrialised noir city to its hundreds of inhabitants, and even the crimes and cases themselves. That’s right - not even the crimes are scripted.

I played an hour or so of an admittedly rough demo and it was overwhelming, frequently stressful, but honestly quite staggering in its ambition. Following a lead, I journeyed to an apartment where I came across a dead body. I skulked around for clues on what happened, pinning dozens of tidbits of information to my investigation board, and drawing links between the pins as I saw fit. Completely under my own steam, I phoned numbers in the deceased’s address book, scanned fingerprints, and was about to leave to chase my newfound leads when I heard police at the door. With seconds to spare I hid inside a cupboard, and remained there while they searched the place, adrenaline pumping, wondering if they would ever leave or if they’d open the cupboard door and I’d have to somehow fight my way out - if I even could. There’s so much I still don’t understand about Shadows Of Doubt, and I’m not entirely convinced that I actually had fun playing it, but it’s fascinating and incredibly impressive, and I felt an immersion while playing that I haven’t felt probably since Cyberpunk 2077 .

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Mr Saitou

Ed: I loved Rakuen , a pixel art RPG that mixed serious themes with fantasy cuteness, and developer Laura Shigihara’s newest offering is Mr. Saitou , a game set in the same universe as Rakuen. Just going by its short demo, I’m convinced it’s going to be equally as special.

You play as Mr. Saitou, a white-collar worker whose life is dictated by a bruising corporate regime, and whose health crumbles in a series of quick flashbacks. The demo starts with a visit to hospital, as you meet an upbeat kid who sketches you, Mr. Saitou, as a fusion of a llama and a worm - a llamaworm! Despite Mr. Saitou’s early irritation, it’s clearly the start of a healing process. He even cracks a smile. After falling asleep, Mr. Saitou awakes in a fantasy version of his corpo-life as a… llamaworm? Wait, everyone is a llamaworm?! I won’t spoil anymore, but it’s genuinely hilarious throughout, and a great commentary on the absurdities of business. Straight on the wishlist.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire

Alice Bee: I’m not big on survival games like Don’t Starve because I am very bad at them, but darn it if Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire didn’t spark joy in my empty heart. Voltaire himself is a lil vampire who prefers broccoli to delicious necks, and is thus cast out to make a life for himself in a nearby graveyard owned by his uncles (who are two heads on one Frankenstein’s monster body). By day, you plant Halloween-themed vegetable crops, harvest any that have grown to maturity, and gather water and other resources. By night, you set traps and fend off the nasty monsters sent by your dad to destroy your plants and scupper your vegetarianism. There are some clever curve balls in the design that force you to balance your garden space very carefully. It’s both smart and cute.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

It’s A Wrap!

Rachel: I first spotted It’s A Wrap! at PAX West last year and was immediately intrigued with its gimmick. It’s a platformer where you use the different tracks of an editing suite to affect the scene above, then when you press pay you have to guide your character through the perfectly timed chaos you’ve just coordinated. It’s such a smart idea for a platformer, and one that also works incredibly well in practice.

Each level plays out like a Hollywood film set: you’re given a script to follow and then have to synchronise the set and the actor so the action scene will play out perfectly. One level had me working out the timings of some falling rocks in an Indiana Jones-style film, where I had to get the order and the timings of each one correct so that when the action phase kicked in, my little dude could jump out of the way of each one just in time without getting splatted. In another level, I had to get the timings of set pieces correctly so that the main character could sneak past a giant robot on the set on a sci-fi film. It’s such a fun and smarty idea! I loved this demo and am definitely keeping my eyes on the Steam page for a release date.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Shady Knight

Liam: Oh, I do love a game that lets you do a big kick. Shady Knight features a lovely long leg whack that makes your shadowy adversaries ragdoll into the dirt, alongside a grappling hook that achieves largely the same result. Your goal here is to reach the top of small, isolated fortresses without getting stabbed by baddies or bitten to death by massive spiders on your way up. You’re physically powerful, but that doesn’t stop everything feeling very scrappy. There’s a lot of scrambling up walls, here. Grappling to hard to reach ledges. Kicking a man repeatedly against a wooden crate until he drops his sword. You can pick up weapons by dashing into them, but enemies can knock them out your hands just as easily. Fights are tense and tough, death is frequent and success must be earned. Shady Knight rules.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

City Of Beats

James: I’ve been enjoying the recent surge of rhythm-violence games as much as the next amateur bassist, though I very much appreciate how twin stick shooter City of Beats builds that zen, in-the-zone feeling without demanding perfect adherence to a metronome. You’ll still get further through its roguelite rooftop runs once you learn to time charge attacks and dodges to the beat, but for most of your damage output, there’s nothing wrong with simply holding the trigger down.

If anything, it’s encouraged, as City of Beats’ laser weaponry is itself part of the soundtrack. The more firepower on-screen, the more beeping synths are layered on top of one another, and each run culminates in a bullet hell boss fight that captivates eyes and ears simultaneously. A fitting and quite literal crescendo to twenty minutes of tuneful, nicely atmospheric blasting.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Wandering Sword

Katharine: When Wandering Sword was first announced last year, this wuxia take on Square Enix’s HD-2D-style of RPGs instantly caught my attention. In this substantial Next Fest demo, Wandering Sword sees you take up the mantle of Yuwen Yi, a warrior who suffers a near-fatal accident after a brush with some frosty frog poison. As you recuperate in a picturesque mountain village, you get to grips with its turn-based grid battles, levelling up your Qi and Meridian paths to boost your stats and, of course, learning key martial arts moves based around swordplay, sabers, fists, polearms and hidden weapons.

The UI still needs some work - in battles, it throws a heck of a lot of text at you at once and discerning what your attacks actually do and what range they have can be difficult through all the different coloured fonts, description and large text boxes that obscure the action. But there’s no denying there’s a lot of potential in its large, grid-based arena battles - think The Banner Saga meets Octopath Traveler - and I’m intrigued to see how it develops how it heads toward release. If you’re in need of a pretty pixel art RPG to tide you over until Octopath Traveler II arrives, this is well worth a shot.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Super Auto Battlemon

Ed: Taking cues from Super Auto Pets, Super Auto Battlemon (SAB) sees you command a queue of monsters that look like cardboard cutouts. And as SAB is an auto-battler, “command”, is a loose terms for pressing play and watching them duke it out against a rival line of monsters. What’s neat is the game’s roguelike elements, which see you selecting a path on a map in a similar way to, say, Slay The Spire , with the ultimate aim of reaching the big boss at the end. As you defeat monsters, you’ll get to pick certain ‘mon to add to your collection, or upgrade them with EXP, or grant them certain affinities. It could work on communicating its effects and passives and the like a bit better, but hey, I still had a lot of fun optimising my perfect queue of cutesy critters.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Amanda The Adventurer

Rebecca: This time last year I wrote about how the >Steam Next Fest demo for My Friendly Neighborhood had me feeling excited for indie horror again. I’m pleased to say that the publishers at DreadXP have repeated the trick with Amanda The Adventurer , another absolutely cursed game based on a fictional(ish, it’s not hard to see where the inspiration comes from) children’s TV show.

To be clear, I’m not accusing DreadXP of pigeonholing themselves or the developers under their banner. Outside of sharing a broad premise, Amanda The Adventurer plays out very differently to My Friendly Neighborhood . While in MFN you were fighting back with an arsenal of colourful weapons, Amanda The Adventurer just wants you to find and watch a few videos, answer some basic vocabulary questions, maybe complete some simple typing training. All activities appropriate to pre-school edutainment programming. Don’t worry about those messages scrawled in blood all over the walls (although, if you do choose to study them, you might spot a release date tease being revealed among the gore the more you play).

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Cook Serve Forever

Liam: The act of playing Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! was an experience not entirely dissimilar to being attacked by a wolf while trying to gift wrap it at the same time. I loved the idea of creating delicious meals within a strict time limit, but the game seemed determined to give me a full blow panic attack four minutes into every play session. By comparison, the demo for Cook Serve Forever feels borderline relaxing. The game’s refreshed cooking mechanics certainly make a difference. Dishes are now prepared by pressing a sequence of buttons for each step of a recipe. Mash A four times. Hold down B. Press any button. Thankfully things aren’t too easy. CSF attempts to trip you by asking you to do things like press any button other than A, with mistakes preventing you from progressing further for a few seconds. This sharp reduction in stress may leave existing fans wanting more, but Cook Serve Forever feels like it’s catering to my specific tastes.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Tape To Tape

Ollie: Am I really so simple? Can a game developer really just slam together two such disparate ideas - hockey and roguelites - and I am fated to enjoy it immensely despite the obvious ridiculousness of such an abomination?

Tape To Tape is a cartoon-y retro-style hockey game - and a surprisingly solid one at that - wrapped up in the bones of a roguelite. In your efforts to propel your burgeoning team of wild-eyed puck-smashers to greatness, you must guide them along a Slay The Spire -esque map of choices. Some are matches with opposing teams, while others will give you a chance to earn new abilities or increase the attributes of your team members. It works well because they really lean into the silliness of the abilities your team can employ. One of my skaters’ special powers was to send their stick hurtling in the direction I choose, often knocking down my own players as often as the opponents. At one juncture I even bribed the referee so that they would occasionally body check my opponents. It was wonderful, and by far the most fun I’ve had with a demo so far this Steam Next Fest.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Super Adventure Hand

Rachel: Okay, so this one is a little weird, but hear me out. You play as a disembodied hand on an adventure to… well, I’m not exactly sure what the hands wants, but Super Adventure Hand is a great demo regardless. Playing as a disembodied human hand, you need to make it from the beginning of each level to the end, scuttling on the tips of your fingertips, grabbing at nooks in the walls to climb, and using your nimble fingers to leap from platform to platform.

The platforming is fine, nothing special honestly, but what you’re really here for is the hand itself, which feels strangely satisfying to control. You don’t have to hold the triggers for each individual finger or anything, just holding the joystick to move is all that’s needed, but there’s a rubbery-ness to its movements that just adds to the overall feel of scuttling along each level. Just boot it up for the hand-feely-ness alone, and if you’re into it, definitely stick around long enough to see the creepy feet with googly-eyes, too.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Outlanders

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Mail Time

Alice Bee: I don’t know what it is, but things where you are a Borrower-sized person running around are fucking well good. They light up so many parts of my brain, and make me kick my legs like a happy toddler grabbing a cat’s face. Mail Time is one of these, a sort-of-collectathon where you’re a newly trained tiny woodland mail carrier with a mushroom for a hat and an acorn for a backpack. The demo is the first level and it’s the most utterly charming thing I’ve seen this year. You run through a forest of nodding flowers, and bounce on mushrooms to reach a hedgehog who lives in a tree. Beatrix Potter eat your bloody heart out.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Coven

Ed: Coven is a retro-styled FPS where you play as a young girl who’s been wrongly accused of witchcraft in the 1600s. The demo starts with you literally burning at the stake. It’s a horrible, gross thing. But a grisly part of me relishes the game’s fast-paced movement and explosions of gore. There’s something a bit Soldier Of Fortune about it all.

More than the gore – and literally being able to cannibalise corpses to regain health - it’s the game’s haunted woods and its attention to detail that surprise. You’re able to shoot flung axes in mid-air, causing them to plop to the floor. Boxes can be lifted to create makeshift platforms. Wheels of cheese can be consumed. I’ll be following this game with a morbid curiosity.

Download the demo on Steam right here .

Amanda The Adventurer

PC

City Of Beats

PC

Codename: Wandering Sword

PC

Cook Serve Forever

PC

Coven

PC

It’s A Wrap!

PC

Mail Time

Video Game

Mr Sun’s Hatbox

PC

Mr. Saitou

Video Game

Outlanders

PC

Shadows of Doubt

PC

Shady Knight

PC

Super Adventure Hand

PC

Super Auto Battlemon

PC

Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire

PC

Xenonauts 2

PC

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