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I have never heard of this game before in my life.
That's not surprising. Legal Dungeon is a somewhat obscure game about police paperwork and corruption created by Korean developer Somi and released in May of 2019. There's not a lot of results for it online, it only has about 300 Steam reviews, and most of what you do get is in Chinese or Korean. Despite all that, it's a neat little game, if often obtuse and a little rough around the edges.
Okay, but what about gameplay? What will we be doing?
We will be playing as Lieutenant Jane Blue, the newly appointed leader of the Central Police Station's second criminal division. Our new job entails reviewing the paperwork submitted by our underlings about their investigations, then submitting the report along with a suggested verdict to the prosecutor. When we recommend indictment, our division is rewarded with points that determine every officer's salary, chances for promotion, and other benefits. The more serious the crime, the more points the case is worth. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Papers, Please for the most part, with a weird pseudo-rpg battle system thrown in at the end of each chapter as the "dungeon".
Sounds like kind of a mess. Why do you like this game again?
I like Legal Dungeon because it plays with some interesting ideas and shows how systems that sound good on paper can be in fact incredibly poorly designed in real life. In theory, the points system in the game encourages the police to be vigilant and pursue suspects to the best of their ability. In practice, the system incentivizes the police to blindly convict, to inflate charges as much as possible, and punishes divisions that are in charge of areas with low crime rates. Almost every character in this game is corrupt, but most of them aren't taking bribes, exchanging favors, or breaking the law: they're simply trying to avoid a pay cut.
Neat. Does it have multiple endings? Will there be thread participation?
Yes, it does. The game has 8 cases and 14 endings, all of which I plan to show if there's enough interest in the thread. Each case has the obvious indictment/non-indictment outcome, but some have special results that can be found with outside-the-box thinking and interpretation of the documents.
For each case I'll present the information and then leave the verdict to a thread vote. The dungeon segments, where the outcome of each case is decided, are essentially being prompted to present relevant information from the files in order to attack or defend the accused criminal. I'll provide these questions as food for thought and to give you an idea of what the game is looking for, but the vote will be strictly on what we present as our verdict (Unless we're going for one of those "special" outcomes, in which case we'll need a little more). To encourage discussion and critical thinking, however, anyone who justifies their vote with evidence or a legal argument will have their vote counted twice!
I plan to update this thread every weekend-- I may be able to squeak out the post-case updates during a weekday, but no promises. I'm in school right now and the semester is just about to start, so if something on that front comes up, my classes are going to take priority. Also, I doubt this will be an issue, but no spoilers, please.
Let's get dungeoning.