One thing that keeps detective games from feeling authentic is that they tend to have traditional game limitations: there are only so many places you can go, only so many people you can talk to. Shadows of Doubt plans to fix that by building a fully simulated neo-noir city in which to track down a serial killer. Developer Cole Jefferies describes it as "A detective stealth game somewhere between Deus Ex and Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective!".

It has a kind of crunchy-pixel, heavily-modded Minecraft look to it in screenshots, and that's partly down to the fact that it's procedurally-generated from hand-crafted chunks. And in Shadows of Doubt, every citizen has a job and an apartment they go home to at the end of the day. And you can break into any of them and rifle through their stuff.

You'll be able to snoop around in anyone's house. (Image credit: ColePowered Games)

If that reminds you of city building games like Cities: Skylines or SimCity, it's not far off: Developer ColePowered Games' last title was Concrete Jungle, a very entertaining city sim that used deck-building mechanics. This time, though, your perspective on the urban sprawl is first-person.

There's no release date set yet for Shadows of Doubt. It'll be out "when it's ready," according to the Steam page.