Paper Perjury

A great little deduction game heavily inspired by the Ace Attorney games. The cases are more grounded, but you can see the inspiration through the character names and their reaction animations. The pixel art has a lot of charm to it, too. Certainly worth checking out!

Overall, this game is above average. The standout feature is that the protagonist and NPCs don't constantly guide your thinking. Unlike many other Ace Attorney-likes it grants you the freedom to solve cases using your own intuition. During the investigation phase, the ability to examine multiple witness statements simultaneously adds a layer of depth, making you feel truly in control and accountable for your choices. These strengths make for a far more rewarding experience than many self-proclaimed courtroom or mystery adventures. That said, there are a few drawbacks. It falls into the same trap as many choice-based detective games: the "correct" answers can be overly ambiguous or feel disconnected from the logic of the case. However, some level of this is expected in the genre. Additionally, while the game avoids over-the-top or unrealistic tropes, its grounded focus on routine police work might feel less "exciting" to some, though it adds a nice touch of realism.

Great Ace Attorney clone! The gameplay loop is the same as AA-likes (Ace Attorney, Tyrion Cuthbert, etc) with an investigation part and a cross-examining part (no courtroom in the game but you're in the interrogation room) but what made this game stand out for me was the setting and the characters! Also the banger soundtrack! The story is well-written too, as it's 5 interconnected cases + a 6th + a bonus case. The cases have around 3 parts in between, so they're pretty long. Overall, I definitely recommend buying the game (or at least trying the demo) if you need to scratch that Ace Attorney itch!

I went into this game knowing that this was not a million dollar Capcom project but a passion project by an Ace Attorney fan like me, and with that expectation, I think it's a solid hommage. If you're really here to scratch the AA itch and broaden your horizon on how these kinda games can play out, I think it'll be worth your while. And if you've never played Ace Attorney but you're here for a bit of mystery and stuff, I think you'll prolly have a good time here. As a huge fan of the AA franchise, there's a lotta feedback I'd like to give to the dev that I think they've also received from many of the other reviews, because while I did have a generally positive experience, I think there's a bit more that coulda been done here and there. The list below is mostly for the dev, but if you're interested in the game and you wanna get a bit more of a nuanced feeling on its positive and negatives, feel free to stick around: What I enjoyed: - Fun and well-written characters (even though for some reason detective Hunt really creeps me out and I can't pinpoint why) - Cool plot across the cases! - Some pretty good mysteries, especially in case 6, where I think the dev really found their feet. Also the character dynamics in case 6 felt a lot more authentic, I really liked this one. - I forget if the AA games do that as well nowadays, but I really liked when the game acknowledged it when I presented a piece of evidence that didn't _quite_ fit but was still relevant, and it did that quite a lot. What I woulda liked to see more of: - AA played a lot with having the player show a location on a map or on a photograph to resolve a puzzle (e.g. "Where on this floorplan was the victim really killed?"), and I always felt that this helped a LOT to visualize how the crime actually played out, and made it easier to find contradictions. I know that woulda probably been a lotta work to implement, but there were some situations where the precise location of the culprit/victim/whatever was crucial and I was not able to visualize it well. - The game mostly takes place "at the workplace," and while I'm a bit surprised at myself saying it, I think some more slice-of-life content would have helped flesh out the characters and relations more? Like, how many AA cases start with "Phoenix and the gang is at the amusement park :)" or "Phoenix and the gang in a hotel :)" or whatever. While I never actively appreciated that much, I realize now how much that did for the worldbuilding, and this coulda had that too. "Sophie and Justina at the ice cream parlor :)" - Especially before Case 6, I feel like questioning statements in cross-examinations felt pretty unrewarding. Like, I never learnt anything particularly new, and I got the impression the dev themselves got a bit tired of writing them, because a lot of them also felt pretty filler (with some fair exceptions!). Generally, cross-examinations might have been relied on a bit too much. Sometimes, a single present prompt of Justina going "This piece of evidence shows us that the oompa loompa couldn't have eaten the ice cream!" would have been fine, too.

cute mystery/law visual novel that has you play as a clerk that got roped into solving mysteries. charming characters and art carries the cases and unlike other detective VNs the cases explores other types of crimes outside of murder(although it's not lack here). the mystery is not the most intricate but the colourful cast and dialogue makes up for that.

This is one of the better Ace Attorney clones out there, taking inspiration equally from the mainline and Investigations games. I like the soft hint system this game uses when you present the wrong evidence: it'll cross it off the list, and it'll stay crossed off no matter which statement you look at, unless another statement happens to be the actual correct one. It's a nice way to deal with the "right evidence, wrong statement to dispute" problem these games often have.

solid ace attorney-like

Rating: A Paper Perjury, such a lovely little game! Meet Justina Smith, a new administration officer/typist at the cop shop who has been seconded to assistant detective. Together with Swift and Hunt, Justina works to solve the crimes linked together in the game leading up to a crime that Justina could never have expected! This game is your pretty standard Ace Attorney type game - collect evidence by talking to characters through dialogue choices, examine the crime scene by "investigating" and clicking on each ticket on the right side of the screen and then use the evidence to contradict the lies that you are told by the witnesses/criminals. There's no courtroom setting to do the debating in, it's just in the environments you meet the characters. As for controls, it's largely clicking and you can use the mouse wheel the scroll back through text or scroll back and forth through the statements that characters make. The characters you meet are kept in a ledger along with evidence you find and statements made, these can be selected during key moments and the game is very forgiving when it comes to making mistakes - you basically can't miss any evidence or get it wrong. I really enjoyed meeting all the colourful (literally and figuratively) characters and going through the dialogue - the gotcha moment animation is SO funny for each character - and I felt so attached to the Eubanks after the game finished. It was fun seeing how everyone interacted and the relationship between Justina and her coworkers grow as time passed. If there's one really minor thing I found weird about the game, it's that there are five "cases" but the game is really one long case and they act more like chapters. You need the context from the previous "case" to actually understand what's going on and why. Within each "case" there are also multiple chapter breaks, where Justina recounts what they did after the scene/what happened/the general mood and then the next part will occur. EG: Case 1 Part 1, Case 1 Part 2. I think it's worth the price, I bought it discounted and it still took me about 10 hours to finish. It's another detective game in a huge indie collection of investigation games, but it's one that should be played.

This game has interesting characters to get to know, and some unique cases to solve. The game is nice enough to indicate items you've already tried using during the examinations, and even warns you if the item you tried will be useful later instead of right then. I'm hoping that with any more games/cases that might be added to this franchise, we'll get to see additional character development for the main characters; while I can safely say that they completed an arc by the end of this game, I'm curious where they will go from here.