Games Like GAZE IN SHADOWS

Game Overview

Ashford, 1928. Jazz spills out of hidden speakeasies, Prohibition has turned every street corner into a marketplace for secrets, and the city’s most powerful institutions operate by rules they never intend to explain. Banks lend to the desperate, then take their homes. Judges deliver verdicts, then collect a second paycheck. The police protect some people by sacrificing others.

GAZE IN SHADOWS is a story-driven, 2D point-and-click mystery in which private detective Zack Brennan and investigative reporter Emma O’Malley become entangled in a murder that reaches far beyond a single victim. What begins as a desperate attempt to clear Zack’s name gradually exposes a sixteen-year conspiracy linking the city’s banks, courts, police force, political establishment, and criminal underworld.

Explore crime scenes, question witnesses, examine documents, uncover contradictions, and connect evidence across five interwoven murder investigations. Each case has its own victim, suspects, revelations, and conclusion, while also drawing you closer to the larger truth buried beneath Ashford.

This is not simply a story about finding a killer. It is a story about what happens when law and justice no longer mean the same thing, when good intentions are worn down by powerful systems, and when two damaged people must decide whether they can still become a reason for the other to keep going.

The Story

Act I: Seventy-Two Hours to Prove His Innocence

A body is discovered inside an underground speakeasy, and private detective Zack Brennan soon finds himself implicated in the murder. With only seventy-two hours to clear his name, he must identify the real killer before the police close the case around him.

His investigation brings him into contact with Emma O’Malley, a young reporter pursuing a lead of her own. Neither trusts the other, but the evidence leaves them little choice but to work together.

What first appears to be a dispute within Ashford’s black market soon points toward a shadowy figure known only as “Whale.” Missing records, intimidated witnesses, and conflicting accounts suggest that the murder is not an isolated crime, but a loose thread in something far larger.

Act II: Five Murders, One Network

As new deaths follow, the investigation spreads across Ashford—from banks and courtrooms to newspaper offices, working-class neighbourhoods, and the private rooms of the city’s elite.

Predatory loans, forced evictions, domestic violence, judicial corruption, and police collusion begin to form a single pattern. Zack’s missing mother and Emma’s uncertain past become inseparable from the cases they are trying to solve.

Every answer brings them closer to the truth, but also raises the cost of uncovering it. Zack is forced to choose between the law and his conscience. Emma begins to question whether publishing the truth is enough to change anything. Meanwhile, the people watching from the shadows decide that the investigation has already gone too far.

Act III: A Truth Sixteen Years in the Making

Every lead eventually returns to an “accident” in 1912.

In the aftermath of that disaster, a powerful group acquired workers’ land for a fraction of its value. Sixteen years later, with the area transformed into profitable commercial property, the same people have returned to remove the next generation from the surrounding neighbourhoods.

They use debt, charity, law, and violence as parts of the same machine. Banks issue the contracts. Judges legitimise them. Police enforce the consequences. No single person appears responsible because no single person is allowed to see the whole picture.

When the final truth emerges, Zack and Emma must confront more than the identity of a murderer. Emma is forced to reconsider her childhood, her benefactors, and the true meaning of the help she once received. Zack must decide how much of himself he is willing to sacrifice for a justice the city may never recognise.

At the end of the investigation, two people carrying the full weight of Ashford must choose whether to face the darkness alone—or become the reason the other keeps moving forward.

Investigation and Deduction

Explore Handcrafted 2D Environments

Search detailed locations through intuitive point-and-click interaction. Examine objects, inspect documents, speak with witnesses, and uncover evidence hidden in the ordinary details of each scene.

A misplaced item, an altered record, or a seemingly harmless personal possession may reveal more than a direct confession.

Piece Together the Evidence

Collect testimony, physical evidence, letters, financial records, and newspaper reports. Compare statements, identify inconsistencies, and establish connections between people, places, and events.

The investigation is not limited to discovering who committed a crime. You must also understand why it happened, who benefited from it, and what kind of system allowed it to happen at all.

Solve Five Interconnected Cases

The main story is structured around five complete murder investigations. Each case introduces a new victim, a distinct group of suspects, its own central mystery, and a dramatic resolution.

Together, the five cases form a single long-form narrative in which seemingly unrelated details return with new meaning.

Read People, Not Just Clues

Not every witness is lying, and not every lie is intended to conceal murder.

Some characters are afraid. Some are protecting someone. Others have spent so long surviving within Ashford’s rules that they no longer recognise their own complicity.

Progress depends on careful observation, an understanding of motive, and the ability to distinguish deliberate deception from fear, shame, loyalty, and desperation.

Characters

Zack Brennan

A thirty-five-year-old private detective and veteran of the First World War, Zack has seen too much to believe that institutions are naturally just.

His father spent his life fighting for workers’ rights and died when Zack needed him most. Zack returned from the war to open a detective agency that has remained perpetually close to bankruptcy.

He still believes in rules, but he knows who usually gets to write them. He takes cases from people who cannot afford him, makes decisions that are rarely practical, and occasionally becomes a hero almost by accident.

Emma O’Malley

At twenty-five, Emma is the youngest investigative reporter at the Ashford Herald.

Orphaned at the age of nine and raised with the support of a mysterious charitable fund, she fought her way through university and into a profession that rarely welcomes women like her.

Emma believes that truth has power: expose wrongdoing, publish the facts, and the world will be forced to change. Ashford is about to test that belief more severely than she has ever imagined.

A Partnership Forged Under Pressure

Zack and Emma begin as strangers drawn into the same investigation—one exhausted by years of compromise, the other still convinced that the written word can defeat the darkness.

Across five cases, they repeatedly save one another, sometimes from immediate danger and sometimes from the quieter pull of despair.

Their relationship is not simply a romance. It is the story of two damaged people discovering that, after saving someone else, they may still need that person to save them in return.

Key Features

Game Details

Genre: Narrative Mystery, Point-and-Click Adventure, Historical Thriller Gameplay: 2D exploration, dialogue, evidence collection, and story-based deduction Mode: Single-player story campaign Estimated Playtime: Approximately 10–12 hours Structure: Five interconnected investigation chapters Core Objective: Solve five murders and uncover a conspiracy spanning sixteen years

“This city is an opportunity for some and a trap for others. The difference is who opens the door for you.”