Legal Dungeon

In this indie, document-reading, information-retrieving game, you play as Lieutenant Jane Blue, the new addition, and leader, of the 2nd Team of Criminal Division. Aided with a trusty desktop pet (Mini Jane) and a report auto-filler function, your job is mainly to find the information needed to extract the necessary information to reach a verdict. This is made more difficult considering you have to deal with upper management breathing down your neck with their reports. Sounds complex? It is, there's no sugarcoating it. Let's train you for the job by extracting the key points of this game.

Gameplay: 3 / 10 - Like finding a needle in a haystack

Let's start with the elephant in the room. We can divide the gameplay in two different aspects: An information extraction game, where you fill in the blanks; and a detective game, where you cross-examine a suspect in order to either convict, or acquit the individual. A game relying on the player to read documents, extract information, and compare it to known information in order to find contradictions is awesome. There're already games that prove this formula true (e.g. Phoenix Wright, Papers Please, etc...), however, in a game where reading is a crucial point, the text is poorly translated at times.

Additionally, the game expects you to place a specific answer, and at times this is quite simple and a non-issue, but later on it becomes this grueling task of "try everything to succeed", which doesn't work that well, considering you have a health bar on the actual interrogation phase, where 0 hp means you have to restart the whole process again, making it all too tedious and monotonous. There are also not too many cases, so the whole experience isn't too long. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on how closely one follows the plotline.

Plot: 8 / 10 - Their way or the highway

While the main plotline tells the story of a newly appointed Team Leader of the Criminal Division, Lieutenant Jane Blue, who is a silent protagonist, your choices give a bit more information in the "case epilogues" talking about your performance, and the dialogues unlocked for each possible indictment. It becomes quite clear that you must not always move according to the law, but rather by what your superiors tell you to do.

The game ranks you in two different markers: Performance, and Precise Legal Execution. If you had to guess which one of these rewards you, I'm sure you'd guess correctly and say Performance. When you move according to your superiors, you receive extra health and damage block chance; the opposite happens if you swim against the current. Whether you move or not according to the law doesn't really matter, as long as you're above the lowest rank.

Adding more depth to the story, in the dialogue sections it's crystal clear that your team, and the whole police department in general, has quotas to fill, and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty to fulfill them. With each case reviewed, you begin to explore and skew the line of morality and the law, and you find out what type of police officer you want to be.

The message is honestly profound, and definitely the best part about this game that criticizes a system designed to protect the people becoming corrupt. The title screen sums it up: a new officer happy to fulfill their duty, unaware of the dark and twisted inner workings of the system.

Music & Sound: 7 / 10 - Chill beats to process documents/indict criminals to...

If I were asked to sum up what I feel about the overall sound design in this game, it would be this one word: Good. The calming beats while you process documents, contrasted with the more hype, "battle" type music, followed by sound that invites reflection and looking back at your decisions. No beat or sound feels out of place, and it makes the game avoid this feeling of emptiness that total silence would evoke. The sound effects when things are inputted, when a battle begins, you deal damage or protect the suspect all are fine as well. There really is no element missing that would impact the experience negatively.

Overall: 6 / 10 - A story that needs a more polished gameplay

Despite the flaws that become apparent to the player the further in into the experience, the story manages to hook the attention of one who likes to explore stories with profound legal and moral conundrums, and a corrupt system that rewards how good your work looks on paper, regardless of method.