Evil Justice
A legal-ish mystery in a kingdom of monsters
Inspired by Ace Attorney, Evil Justice has the player recently raised from undeath and forced into a ridiculous legal system, where false executions are everyone’s favorite entertainment.
Who can you manage to save with your arguments alone? Can you even save yourself?
Features puzzle-focused gameplay requiring logical arguments to proceed. Also includes Story Mode, allowing progress without risk of a Game Over. Can be toggled at any time.
ROs: I dunno. I’m thinking about it.
Let me know if you find any bugs or internal logic errors, or if you just really hate one of the characters. As ever, I hope you have lots of fun with Evil!
Current status: 146,000 words, four courtroom battles, about four and a half hours to play through.
Updated 3/31/24:
Chapter 4 added! Word count: 146,000. That’s +65k!
The biggest chapter yet, with greater difficulty as well as more player choice.
Updated 12/23/22:
Chapter 3 added! Word count: 81000.
Expanded damage mechanics! Now you can feel the sting of every failure as it happens! Lose (or gain) Confidence in a variety of situations. Keeping Confidence high throughout the game will be harder, but you can now exceed 100. How high can you get? And like before, toggling Story Mode on prevents a Game Over from damage.
6 save files! I made the number bigger! It said more than 6 isn’t recommended, though, so that’s probably the best I can do.
Updated 7/11/22:
There’s a chapter select to skip right to the new stuff. Current word count is 48,000!
I also re-did some of the post-trial stuff based on feedback from here. The new content is clearly labeled, so you can’t miss it.
And introducing: You can die! Run out of Confidence, and you’ll get a Game Over, just like in other lawyer-adjacent games. No worries, though, you can toggle Game Overs on and off if you’d prefer to relax.
Whew! I think I have a decent idea of what it’ll take to make the whole thing. I plan on forging ahead.
Please let me know any thoughts you got. Something reads weird? Difficulty too high? Nonsensical logic? I can fix it.
Original Post
Hello CoG Forum. I’ve got something a little odd for you.
I’m interested in making a game that I call “Evil Justice”. I’ve written the first chapter, which is about 23,000 words (although much of that is unique failure dialogue). It takes about an hour to play through.
The game takes place in a kingdom of fantasy monsters. The player is quickly drawn into the kingdom’s off-kilter legal system, and must defend their innocence with clever arguments to survive.
You can play it here. You can try to solve the case with the best possible score (your Confidence, displayed on the stats page and at the end of the game), or you can deliberately pick bad responses to see the unique failure text. In its current form, you can’t die by losing health, so there’s no penalty, but you may want to try for real to see if you can get a good score.
Please, let me know what you think. The game mechanics are based on the “Ace Attorney” series, but with a Choice of Games twist. I’m not sure whether this kind of game is welcome here, so this is my first, most important test: Based on this first chapter, should I make the full game? I expect the full game to include four additional chapters in a similar style.
I’m interested to hear any feedback you may have, but I have a few specific questions as well:
Difficulty: The original concept would have the player die upon running out of Confidence, which would cause the player to lose some progress. Is this actually a good idea? I’ve been considering otherwise recently, and the score system is my current compromise. Should there be a toggle, so players can put pressure on themselves, or ease off as they prefer?
Alternate Paths: Choices with meaning are a vital part of Choice of Games, so I’ve included some that wouldn’t be present in an Ace Attorney game. In the first chapter, it is possible to leave the Ring early, which continues the story with some relevant changes, but can skip half of the gameplay. Is that fair, to offer that choice to an unknowing player? They might skip a whole bunch of core game.
Romance: There’s none yet, and I don’t know if there should be, due to the nature of the player character. Is it even right to allow a one-day old creature to be romantically involved? Would there be issues with power imbalance? The player has many of the memories of an existent person, so it would probably be fine, but I’m not certain. I’d be fine with not having romantic relationships in the story, but I understand that’s a major draw of Choice of Games for some. Is it important enough to make sure I add it? I can, if need be.
I’ll take any feedback you got. I’m 100% ready to spend several months writing the whole game, but I have to make sure it’s worth doing. If not, I’m prepared to shift gears, but I have to know first, and this is how I’m checking.
Thank you for reading. I hope you have a good time with Evil!
