In a world where we’ve had Chicken Police and Blacksad: Under the Skin and Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, the idea of playing an anthropomorphic animal who solves noirish crimes has stopped seeming all that strange. So the fact that The Shadow Syndicate has you play a private detective in a version of 1933 Brooklyn where all the people are dogs and cats and birds and frogs isn’t that strange. What is strange is that you play a dog detective with a magical Sacrifice Ring that gives you supernatural abilities.
In the trailer we see detective Sam Marlowe teleport through the shadows and slow down time, and according to the Steam page his ring also lets him stun or “instantly execute” enemies at the cost of “a deadly curse that grows stronger over time.”
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Between mystically enhanced third-person stealth and shootouts there’s a whole L. A. Noire’s worth of witness-questioning and evidence-analyzing to do. Marlowe’s investigation into a missing mentor leads him into an occult conspiracy that—based on a swastika briefly glimpsed in the trailer—might be connected to the rise of fascism.
But wait, there’s more. The trailer shows a darts minigame, and apparently there’s blackjack and bowling and sidequests in a Brooklyn hub area that offers downtime activities between missions. So maybe throw a bit of Yakuza into the influences pot, along with the Max Payne and Wolf Among Us.
The Shadow Syndicate was just announced at Gamescom Latam. It’s the work of independent studio KillaSoft, which is based in Barranquilla, Colombia, and release info “will be announced in the coming months.”
I do like a noir story, though my favorites usually have a name that follows the traditional template of being called “The Big Something or Other”. You know, like The Big Sleep, The Big Clock, or The Big Lebowski. The Shadow Syndicate seems a bit forgettable by comparison. Missed a trick not calling it “The Big Dog”.
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