Summary

• Shadow City Mysteries offers a unique game mechanic with different narrative perspectives in each playthrough.
• The game is influenced by Heavy Rain, L.A. Noire, and Nier Automata, blending detective elements and replay value.
• As well as the game, the studio is working on visual novels, a tabletop RPG, tarot deck, radio drama, graphic novel, and anime shorts.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shadow Cꩵity Mysteries: A Clockwork Noir is a slick noir detective mystery where player choice matters, with a stunning black and white art style featuring a splash of colour here and there for that extra stylish vibe. At Gamescom, I spoke🤪 with Play on Words creative director Christopher Mifsud to learn more.

After watching the cinematic trailer, Mifsud unfurls some of the inspirations behind the game, “It's a 3D third-person narrative adventure game that's Blade Runner by way of Lovecraft, set in a Frank Miller Sin City type of world with a new game plus twist.” Players take on the role of Nyla Nightingale, a down-on-their-luck private investigator, in a story that can unfold in a multitude of ways.

The narrative adventure aspect of Shadow City Mysteries is inspired by Heavy Rain, the detective elements are inspired by L.A. Noire, and finally, Nier Automata inspired the replay value, offering a twisting perspective of the narrative with each playthrough. “ In a narrative adventure game, we don't make the enemies harder [in New Game Plus],” Mifsud says. “We change the story. The first time you play through, it's a mystery. The second time you play through, it's a conspiracy. And the third time you play through, it's a supernatural thriller.”

It’s an incredibly interesting idea to take the same game and shine a different light on it with each subsequent run. Nier Automata did it with incredible finesse, but that was a much larger production, so can an indie studio achieve the same results? Mifsud tells me the first playthrough takes up to three hours, going through again to unearth the conspiracy takes closer to five, and if you play a third time to learn about the supernatural thriller, you’ll be putting in closer to seven hours total. The first playthrough is more straightforward, as Mifsud explains, “The idea is you're a novice detective the first time, an expert, and then a veteran detective.”

Gameplay is as you would expect for a detective story. You explore different locations, uncover evidence, interrogate suspects, and then piece all the clues together to move the story forward. You also have an investigative insight feature that Mifsud explains is “a ping that lights up the things that you can interact with in the world, which is important because when the story changes, it's not always the same things you can interact with.”

You’ll also get hunches, which seem to be points that you can spend to earn extra clues during specific scenes, with Mifsud telling me, “As you gather clues, you'll get hunches, which during dialogues will be a little time where you can spend it if you want, and you'll get additional information. [They’re] not critical to the case, but about the world. But it'll be limited, you'll have to pick and choose when you want to get those clues.”

You can also choose different backgrounds for Nyla thꦫat change the narra🎃tive, deciding whether she’s rich or a criminal, whether she’s brass or iron clockwork in this steampunky setting, and whether she uses light or shadow abilities.

“What happens here is these will help affect how you handle the critical path,” Mifsud explains. “You might bribe somebody if you're rich, or you might intimidate them if you're a criminal. You might control their mind if you have light magic, right? What background you have unlocks specific cases based on the background, and the combination unlocks them. So if you're rich in brass, you get a special case. If you're rich, brass, and light, you get a special case.”

Depending on the choices you make, Nyl𝓰a will take on different appearances. If you choose brass, she’ll have 🍒a delicate arm piece, whereas iron will give her a more rugged arm. Criminal Nyla will have tattoos on her neck that are rats to depict the Court of Rats, while if you go for the Society of Ravens rich route, you’ll have a nice shiny necklace.

But where Play on Words is reallyಞ being ambitious with Shadow City Mysteries is that it’s not just working on creating a singular title, but is simultaneously working on bringing the IP to different mediums.

“We're doing a lot of the transmedia to go along with it,” Mifsud says. “We have six visual novels we plan on doing that are prequels to major NPCs in the game.” Players will receive a code to put into the game also, to factor in the novels, “Then when you encounter the Rat King, he may say something like, ‘Oh, I had to kill somebody back in the day’ or reference what you did.”

Additionally, on September 10, the backer kit for the tabletop RPG is launching, which features pre-gen characters from within the same world setting. “It's fifth edition based, and instead of races, we have factions,” Mifsud tells me, showing me different character types and explaining how a Court of Rats faction member would be Dexterity-based, while a Crafter would be Constitution focused.

“We'll also be releasing a Tarot deck with it,” Mifsud continues. “The cards are all designed by this awesome tattoo artist, Luana from Malta. She did all our symbols for our groups, and now she's doing the Tarot deck with us. Rabbit Stoddard is doing the actual written design for them, and she's incorporating that. These will be the physical Tarot deck, but the designs from the deck will be hidden objects or collectibles [in the game] and there will be stories that go along with them.”

If you thought that was already enough to have on any indie developer’s plate, there’s more. “We're doing a radio drama that will come a little bit later,” Mifsud says. “A ten-episode radio drama, old school like The Shadow. It will be [set] about 20 years [prior to the game], telling more stories of how we got to where we are with Nyla now. Then we're also working on a graphic novel we'll release weekly, and we're doing a little nice 10-to-20-second anime shorts to go along [with it], like Aeon Flux style.”

There’s a whole IP being built here, and where most small projects start with one aspect and then grow into others, Play on Words is tackling everything together. Mifsud tells me it’s not as hard as you imagine, as the main body of wor🦋k is already there. They’ve already created this whole new world with in-depth lore, so adapting it for a TTRPG seems natural. The art style of their work already lends itself to graphic novel styles, and many other aspects will overlap with one another in some way.

Mifsud admits the TTRPG is “coming a little bit sooner than we wanted” given that the Shadow City Mysteries: A Clockwork Noir is slated for a Q1 2026 launch window, but on the bright side they can use the tabletop launch to help crowdfund for the game in the meantime. “We plan on being as self-funded as possible until we absolutely need [to], or somebody comes to us with the right offer to make it all happen. You kind of have to be scrappy right now in the industry, because there's not buckets of money.”

As some parting wisdom, Mifsud emphasises to me that the team “really want to make experiences for players of all backgrounds”, going on to say “We want people to feel like this is our world, and this is my version of the world. We're trying to make sure that everyone, cleverly and clearly, is fairly represented and actually has characteristics that they can point to and go, ‘Yeah, that's my character’. Someone that they identify with, because I think we need more of that.”

You can wishlist , , and stay up to da༺te and the .