How to start game?)looks like i try everything...but
P.S. Okay...get it...and it really hard...very hard))) but interest idea)

@fedir I'm sorry you're having trouble! The entire game has two simple mechanics: wacking guilty/innocent with the gavel, and reading the docket/conversations. If you're having a hard time using the gavel, try slamming the gavel up and down on the desk. If you're having a hard time getting the cases right, try skimming the docket before the plaintiff/defendant start talking. The quicker you play, the more bonus time you get!

Sorry again. I thought I did a pretty good job with the tutorialization. Ah well, that's what I get for implementing an obscure mechanic ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

Fun! I enjoyed this experience.

@celtican tutorial is good, it looks just like it work not every time :sweat_smile:

This is fantastic. I got the bad ending but seeing the reactions when you pick the obviously wrong move was worth it. I'll probably come back and try to get more endings at some point lol. Amazing game

When I get the interaction of this game, it becomes very interesting! I like the constant smashing of the hammer and the fact that the sounds of the animals are very humorous.

What an amazing game! Kept me completely entertained all the way to the end. Great art, great writing, and the mechanic was super stressful in a good way. Amazing job, you all should be proud of what you created!

Really love the characters and stories (: The gavel is a little unresponsive for me but the rest is BANG ON

Wow, I was about to respond to two comments when I refresh my page to find three more :eyes:

@joshua-denk Thanks! I've heard your game is pretty fun too, but I haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. This weekend had me beat haha

@paul-merkamp Oh of course. I really tried to make it feasible to just slam "GUILTY" through the entire game, I knew people would love that :smile: Funny how we both rated each other's games at the same time, your game was rad. Good luck!

@moonblast I love our audio designer's work on this one. It's the first time I've had the pleasure to work with something like that in Ludum Dare, and it's been a blast. I recorded the footsteps, some animal voices, and the (faint) gasp sound, and Miguel mixed them up. My favorite sound effects are the footsteps, it just triggers me to laugh for some reason :slight_smile:

@firebelley Thank you so much! I've been a little worried that the game would be *too* stressful, so we added some features to make it easier—like the intermission and extra timer. Actually, I'm worried that most games this LD are too stressful, since it seems like a stress-inducing theme. I haven't played too many games yet, so who can say!

@fedir The gavel is something that I wanted to improve but never got time around to doing it. With the way it currently works, you have to lower the gavel and then quickly raise it a certain amount in a certain timeframe. So, if you smack the desk just once with the gavel (and don't raise it), no response happens. I figured most people would enjoy smashing the gavel up and down quickly so I wasn't worried that much. I'm glad you enjoyed it regardless!

Hilarious, I was laughing the whole way through! I was worried that 10 seconds wasn't going to be enough time to parse what was actually being said, but it actually feels just about right. The art is super quirky, and the cases are really funny. Others have already commented about the gavel mechanics but you know what, it's a weekend, not everything is going to be polished.

@gwenckatz Hey Gwen! Now that you commented on the game, I can actually find your Ludum Dare page and rate your game :smile:

Yup, we did some testing on our dialogues and removed/edited those that seemed like they didn't get to the point fast enough (except the one about Yertle walking over the lawn, because humor). I just wrote two test cases, but they ended up being funny enough that (with some tweaks) they ended up in the final game. @cinderwolf42 is the real genius behind the dialogue!

Speaking of dialogue, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the case that had the, uh, blackmailed pictures :thinking:

Absolutely adore the idea and execution on the theme! I had a smile on my face the whole time playing this! Love the quirky characters and dialogues. And not sure if the cases are pre-written or procedurally generated, but laughed out loud at the Grand Theft Auto Koala grandama :smile: While 10 seconds was very short, the game had a Papers Please way about it that really gave insight to a judge's POV! Only nitpick is the gavel taking a while to get used to, but otherwise really enjoyed the game! Great work! Oh and I learned a new phrase today - Kangaroo Court (noun)!

Really fun concept and great execution. It certainly got frantic too! It was hard to make a decision so quickly, but I feel that fit the theme well!

@wildmusketeer All the cases are pre-written, the only element of random chance is the order of the cases that you get! Regarding the name of the game, we knew what it was going to be named since the start of the jam. It's kinda hard to miss out on that pun, right?

@irriadin Thanks! We definitely put in a lot of features to slow down the game to keep it less frantic, but hopefully we didn't divert too far away from the theme.

There is some jankiness going on here. It's pretty annoying, because the game itself could be really cool. Just looking at that sheet and trying to keep up with what they're saying, the timer, all while they're doing that voice mumble thing is very very disorienting, not to mention the gavel is unwieldy. There's no reason to be able to strike it in two dimensions. Its hitbox is also small, so it's almost impossible to use it instinctively. It's also pretty unforgiving, with no warning when you're low on time. There's no "restart" button either. There are some typoes and even more grammatical errors as well. Good concept, doesn't work nearly as well as it should. Fix these things and make a better game out of it.

@wfmg I'm sorry that you had such a hard time, I thought we did a pretty good job (considering the time constraints anyways). We realized a better way to make the voices, but ran out of time to rerecord and remix them; that probably would have helped with the disorienting nature of the whole thing. Regarding the gavel, the original idea was actually to just have the player drag and drop the gavel over the Innocent/Guilty blocks (then playing an animation). However, we wanted to give a bit more immersive controls to the gavel to make up for the simplistic nature of the game. That did make the gavel less reliable, but I'm quite satisfied with how awesome it feels to bash "GUILTY" over and over! Perhaps an option to switch between the two modes would have made it easier for people. I'm not sure what you mean by the hitboxes being too small though, frankly they're massive and could be shrunk. There are also visual and audio cues when you're running low on time, but I suppose we could have done a better job on that front (I'm thinking that the timer should be closer to the center of the screen).

I don't work on jam games after the jam, I prefer keeping them preserved for historic and sentimental reasons. Thank you for the feedback regardless! The whole point of receiving feedback on games is to remove your biases from your own creation, so honest (albeit sometimes harsh) feedback is appreciated.

Haha, "Kangaroo Court"! That's such a great pun!

The artwork, character/voice design, and overall story elements were a thrill! Great work integrating all of this together into a spectacular courtroom drama-esque game. The 10 second was definitely a challenge to digest all the information, and maybe not something you would have chosen outside this theme ... but that certainly makes this theme interesting. We're forced to play in ways we might not otherwise (gut decisions only).

My only other feedback is that I had a tough time sometimes getting the gavel hit right .. lost a second here and there.

Fantastic art and sound, plenty of humour and an all around really fun game! If I'm going to nit-pick, the gravel smashing mechanic could have been smoother (I often had to swing it up and down a few times to get the verdict) but the rest of the game was spot on!

I loved this game and all the little quirks of the cases. I know you couldn't really do anything about the 10 seconds window and I was grateful for the bonus-time, but as a non-native speaker, it was really hard keeping up. Understanding isn't a problem for me, just reading at the necessary speed wasn't possible.
Also very nice to not give the information directly. I especially liked the Koala being accused of eating meat if I remember correctly. Of course it is obvious, but with the pressure it got me.
Art was great, the sounds were great, the cases and characters were amazing, what more is there to say? I loved it.

Clever idea for the theme! Nice balance of pressure trying to understand the document to the case with the timer and great intensity to the game !
Couple of bits of polish to do but all part of the jam fun. Great entry!

I did have some issues with the gavel not registering but, aside from that, this has been one of my favorite entries so far! It's a great use of the theme in a clever and complete little package. While the gavel should certainly be more reliable for the time you have, it was otherwise very polished in presentation and gameplay loop.

Of course it was frantic and there was information overload but that seemed to be exactly the point. I always felt like I had just enough information to make a weary assumption but I somehow got the "good" ending. Great work to the entire team!

Great idea and the cases I was able to see were fun! Sadly I'm a bit too slow at reading for this game, if it was only the conversation I could do it, but reading the docket as well is just too much for my eyes. The presentation is also gorgeous: the art looks great and you get a lot done with those minimal wiggle animations! Music and sounds work well too, it's nice to have some speaking mumble. Anyways, wish I could have played more of this but great entry nonetheless!

Fantastic submission haha. I'm a bit slow at reading so uhh I had to cheese it a bit by pausing and reading the cases haha. I think the idea clashes a bit because the case files were so funny!! 10 seconds is barely enough to read it all haha. I especially loved the way the tutorial was designed. I think having the player to start the game by slamming the gavel is a great way to introduce the mechanic.

Overall really amazing work haha.

Oh, God, that's fast :smile: Great use of the theme, fun stories right there, I WON! :smile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNnNc2lDPZ4

Woops, I'm late on some comments!

@hawkin Forcing you to make a gut decision is what we were going for, yeah. Originally, we had the idea that the conversations would last longer than 10 seconds, and the easy hints would take place after the 10 second mark (you would have to use up some of the bonus timer to get the full story). But, we ended up using the current model instead. It's an interesting design to think about: overload the player with so much information that they intentionally don't take all of it in. Weird, huh?

@alex-de-la-cour Feel free to nitpick about the gavel. I thought that most people would smash the gavel violently and continuously when they made a judgment, and the gavel works better when you do it like that. I spent the last two hours or so fixing bugs and adding polish when I should have spent the last two hours fixing bugs *and* fixing the gavel. Playtesting the game would definitely have helped, maybe that's something I should try doing next Ludum Dare :thinking:

@fribolin The vegetarian koala case is probably my favorite one, because it requires out-of-game knowledge to fully make the correct judgment. With the language issue though, it was something I was really worried about going into the game. We added in a bonus timer and some intermission to help, but that's not a real solution. After the jam ended, we realized a better solution would simply be an option in the settings to enable extra time to be given, if only we thought of that sooner. Thanks for enjoying it regardless!

@pauls134 "Video games are akin to art: they are never finished, only abandoned." I could polish constantly, its probably my favorite part about game dev. Trying to jam in as much polish as you can into a single weekend is a really fun challenge to participate in. And while I am quite pleased with our performance this time around, there's always more room for more polish! Thanks for playing, your game is rad, too!

@tomatolamp It's interesting that you managed to get the good ending (presumably on your first try), I was afraid the game was too difficult to make it to the end for most people. Did you win first try? Congrats if so! Balancing games is quite difficult, especially for jam games. Maybe we did an alright job at it, even though we did very little testing? :eyes:

@bqq Thanks for playing! We tried to use bullet points to outline to cases, but I think we only managed to do that to a few cases. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, we certainly should have added a setting to increase the time you had—it's a shame we thought of that afterwards. Thanks for pointing out the wiggle animations, I made those, and I agree that they really add a lot of punch to the game!

@sheol Finally, someone who appreciates the tutorialization! :sob: I thought the tutorialization was awesome, but my heart wavered when the first comment rolled in. I do think that we might have gone overboard on the tutorial with Randel the Crow comes in with two big tutorial speeches that are unskippable, it's been a common criticism that those scenes should at least be skippable. Still, solid tutorial besides that little bit. Thanks for playing!

@molpe This is actually the first time I've seen anyone play the game! For our past entries I at least went into Twitch streams and showed off our games there, but I hadn't had much time to do that this Ludum Dare. I haven't even seen anyone on my team play it! I saw a few bugs while watching you play, playtesting is definitely something We should do next time :laughing: Thank you for enjoying the game!

Visuals are great but I don't get enough time to react. This game would work better if you had 30 seconds or more

@epeachyband Alas, that's the nature of the theme. _\*cough\* the theme always sucks \*cough\*._ We felt like the game was already only loosely fitting the theme since we already gave the player *way* more than 10 seconds—it ends up being closer to 23 seconds if you count reading the docket during intermission and using the entire bonus timer. The game is absolutely trying to emphasize quick decision making... maybe we should have made the tutorial guy say "heck, you probably won't even be able to read all of the docket!" Games are art, there's always improvements to be made. Thanks for playing!