Paper Perjury

Ace Attorney is one of my favourite series ever, but eventually you reach that bittersweet point where you’ve played all the entries and can’t relive the thrill of solving a case for the first time. While I was searching for similar games to the series, I came across a Reddit comment by a user named Blueisland5, who shared a detailed list of recommendations. One title stood out – Paper Perjury, which he had created himself. After playing it through, I can say it deserves that recommendation. This game, developed by Paper Cat Games, is an Ace Attorney fan project in everything but name. You’re assigned cases, question witnesses, gather evidence, and interrogate suspects, where you can either “question” (press) them or “deduce” (present evidence). There are a few clear nods to Ace Attorney, like the Trucy Wright–inspired Annie Carde and plenty of the series’ trademark punny names. Some might call it lazy, but as someone who absolutely adores Ace Attorney, anything that comes close to replicating the feeling I had playing through those games is welcome in my book. That said, there are some key differences between Paper Perjury and Ace Attorney: Instead of playing as a defense lawyer, you step into the shoes of Justina Smith, a police desk clerk dragged into detective work and mentored by the very ♥♥♥♥ Gumshoe-like Ernest Hunt. Rather than a string of mostly standalone cases, you solve five that connect directly into one overarching story. Interestingly, this wasn’t always the plan, as creator James Acosta explained to me: “I didn’t intend for all five cases to connect. I wanted them to be separate stories that connect by theme rather than plot. But after writing one case, I had to connect it to the next… then the next… until the five ended up being connected. It was kind of an accident that it happened that way, but I’m glad it worked out in the end.” Unlike Ace Attorney’s often over-the-top courtroom drama, Paper Perjury opts for a more realistic tone, focusing on the day-to-day investigative work behind a range of crimes, from embezzlement to murder. As James explains: “I prefer the more grounded stories in Ace Attorney. They may not be ‘realistic’, but the Shu Takumi games [original Ace Attorney trilogy] always felt more grounded and on a smaller scale. I’m not as big of a fan of Yamazaki and his team’s games [Dual Destinies, Spirit of Justice etc.] because they try to be as large as possible. So when writing Paper Perjury, I wrote the game how I would have wanted it.” These differences are what make Paper Perjury stand out: its believable characterisation helps players connect more deeply with its cast, and the fact the game is one consistent narrative helps keep the player hooked to experience the next story beat. When you finally take down the main antagonist, it feels truly earned. We also see the friendships that grow between the police characters, and examining certain areas in the games allow for some interesting and humorous backstories for Justina and the others. The game’s story weaves in sociopolitical commentary in a respectful and non-overbearing way, with particular focus given to the Eubank family and company, who are relentlessly trying to buy out housing from poorer tenants and owners to build expensive properties. James explained this: “Gentrification is a theme I used based on my experiences living in California. Seeing gentrification happen before my eyes was something I wanted to write about.” Importantly, no one is portrayed as purely evil. The writing consistently tries to understand each character’s motives, encouraging empathy even when their actions seem indefensible. It makes you really care about where every character ends up, and the epilogue does a good job of showing realistic but interesting outcomes for each of them. There are a few changes made, though, that I would have preferred them not to. When examining areas, instead of moving a reticle around the screen, pertinent spots are listed in the top-right corner, making examination a literal checklist instead of an engaging hunt for key clues. The investigation sections also tend to follow the same formula – examine each area and talk to everyone, then review and deduce their statements – whereas Ace Attorney mixed things up more by forcing you to prevent specific evidence or profiles to characters to advance the plot. Even so, there are some neat little details that give the game extra personality and show a level of design that most games of this nature don’t. The soundtrack, while similar to Ace Attorney, is still immaculately produced and will stay in your head for a while. The character design and animations (especially Justina’s and Fie’s) are all charming and expressive. My favourite moment comes in the fourth case’s interrogation, when the game flips the concept on its head: you switch from Justina to defense counsel Ferris Eubank and must poke holes in your own argument to move forward. Paper Perjury is a confident and compact visual novel, with a story that can be beaten in about ten hours, and simple but engaging gameplay that streamlines the flow of Ace Attorney while moving at a brisk enough pace that it never feels too repetitive. Obviously, this is highly recommended to any Ace Attorney fan, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to someone just starting in the genre either. James and Rebecca Collins, the writer and programmer for the game, are already working on a free DLC case, which he describes as “a stand-alone case that uses everything we learned from the base game to make something special.” If it’s anything like the main story, fans are in for a treat. 4/5

They just dropped new content for free. The game isn't listed as being in early access, nor was it when I bought and played it. And the five chapters were a full Ace Attorney narrative, with a connected beginning, middle, and end. This chapter 6 they've released the first half of is basically a free expansion. Positive review for that alone.

A more down to earth Phoenix Wright-style game that does most things right. It's more grounded, the characters are a lot less out there and the cases are more straight forward and "normal". Arguably a bit too normal. Not boring, but I kind of missed the more colorful characters many similar games have. You are not a lawyer in this one, but rather a police clerk who get to help out the two detectives with the cases, but the gameplay is practically identical with investigations and then interogations (instead of court cases). If you like the genre, there are much here for you to enjoy. Not the best Phoenix Wright like i played, but it's solid enough. There are some missable achievements, 3 require you to say specific obviously wrong awnsers and two should trigger if you just investigate everything, but just knowing the name of them should give you a big hint on where they are in the story. The rest are for compleating each case.

God i'm so desperate for ace attorney clones

A very charming little project that will hopefully keep me alive until Ace Attorney 7

Este juego consigue la esencia de qué hace a Ace Attorney tan entretenido. Con personajes memorables, buena música y con la mítica mecánica de detectar contradicciones. Y al mismo tiempo, consigue tener una identidad propia, se nota que no necesita copiarlo y sabe qué es lo que funciona. Se nota que es un estudio indie. Pero han hecho un trabajo genial y tengo ganas de ver qué mas nos dan.

Really good game, I'd probably rate it somewhere below the AA:PW trilogy and TGAAC but above the AJ trilogy. Around on par with the Investigations games Good things: - The cases, writing and characters - The general setup of how you're thrown into the cases As a player who doesn't know what do to and figuring these things out for the first time, the whole office worker turned detective assistant thing makes a lot more sense than being a lawyer in your first case Also the way you're first [spoiler] under the wing of an experienced detective and then gradually working more and more with beginner detective sophie, being closer to her level of experience, and "figuring things out together" so to speak, was very cool. [/spoiler] - The music. Some songs sound a lot like they're from TGAAC, others (like Between the Lines ~ Presto) have their own identity and stand out as some great music - Getting more free updates after release Bad things: - Some minor polish issues. [strike] My biggest gripe by far in this regard is that scrolling through the list of evidence doesn't quite work with a controller. You can go through the visible elements with your left stick, but it wont scroll down as you keep pushing the left stick down. You have to move the right stick down to manually scroll [/strike] (fixed) But also things like the pixel art being inconsistent in pixel sizing. - [spoiler] That connection from the cowboy dude to the prison escape through the newspaper. That was just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. [/spoiler] - [strike] Case 6 not being out yet. I know that free content is cool and all, but I really am worried that I'll forget playing it if it takes much longer to release [/strike] Fixed, the case is out now :)

Ace Attorney clone. I was enjoying it until one of the characters you met was a trans kid. Nope nope nope.

It's a short game - only took me 11 hours to beat - but if you love Ace Attorney and are craving more, this certainly scratches the itch. It's even pretty gay!

I really don't like giving indie games negative reviews, but... I'm sorry, but the vibes are rancid on this one. In the year 2026, I really don't think we need a game where the central moral seems to be "rich people are people too, you should feel bad when bad things happen to them no matter how many people they hurt beforehand, the real threat to our society is poor people who do crimes because they don't want to solve their problems the Right Way" Like, you know your morals are skewed when [spoiler]a character who committed minor fraud in order to keep his orphanage running gets scolded harder for his actions by the narrative than the rich businessman who spends literally every moment of his screentime doing something despicable (but who we're repeatedly told after his death was totally a really nice guy if you got to know him).[/spoiler] Even outside of that, really can't say the gameplay is worth the price of admission. It's as shallow an Ace Attorney game as they come, to the point where you literally never need to use the press mechanic outside of the tutorial case. The structure is a little wonky too - the idea of each case being part of a broader interconnected plot sounds really cool on paper and has a lot of potential, but because each individual case is so tiny and mostly covers relatively minor crimes until the final two cases, it just feels like barely anything of substance has happened by the time the game ends. The only nice things I can say are that there's some decent LGBTQ+ representation and the recently-released bonus case is a bit better put together and a step in the right direction narratively, but it's very much a case of too little too late. Tl;dr: this game is Ace Attorney for people who insist on calling it X instead of Twitter.