Legal Dungeon has you filing police paperwork, using previously-collected evidence to build a case. And you’d better get those convictions or else your superiors will be coming for you.
Legal Dungeon is an intriguing game, paring down criminal mysteries into an act of reading through paperwork for the facts you need to get a conviction. You have everything you need to complete your case in your file, but you need to look up criminal precedents, laws, and specific aspects of the case in order to put your indictment recommendation together. With this framework, it feels more like you’re working to solve real cases rather than playing a crime video game.
This sense of reality comes naturally, as the system and its stories come from Somi, a developer who has done police work in Korea. With that realism comes a darker side to the game, and arguably its most compelling feature: the ability to do harm in working to get convictions. Your whole goal in Legal Dungeon is to get arrests, and if you’re crafty with your research, you can find dubious reasons to lock people up and get the convictions you need to keep your job.
In doing this, Legal Dungeon is a deeply disturbing look at how the law can be used against the law-abiding, and all in favor of making its enforcers look good to their employers and politicians. It’s a look at how many jobs come with some downright evil elements that many of us wash our hands of, saying it was ‘just part of our jobs.’ It’s a game that asks us to examine the acts we blindly take part in and how they can be harmful and cruel, and that we need to always be examining ourselves and our actions. In a time when we truly need to be looking out for one another and be vigilant in how our actions can hurt those around us, it’s easily one of the most vital game experiences of 2019.
Legal Dungeon is available now on Steam.