I found this game profoundly disappointing. I'd read the reviews, and was ready for the frustrating RNG (which did seem completely unnecessary). What I wasn't ready for was the shoddy writing of the cases. It seems to me that nobody who describes the cases as 'interesting and well written' knows a damned thing about the law.

This is not a game about making judgements, it's a game of solving puzzles - from the ridiculous and nonsensical puzzles you have to solve to access physical evidence, to the puzzle of "Who is guilty?" The notion that "You ask questions in order to gain information" is false: you click once on the microphone, and read a script that contains some questions and answers.

Were I actually a judge in any of these cases, there's a ton of questions I'd have asked, including "Why did you arrest this man?" (This line of questioning was not available, in part, because the arresting officer did not appear in the courtroom. The only witness in any of the cases was the accused.)

The last straw for me was the divorce case where I had to assign custody of the children. My judge character did not have a single question for either parent.

And then, of course, there's judicial discretion. Roughly half the gameplay consists of looking up the names of offences in a badly-written guide to the legislation (OK, that's probably somewhat realistic) and then adding up the sentences.

Papers Please took a job that was theoretically very simple and explored a depth of humanity, ethical issues, and frustrations. It provided a genuine insight into how such a functional job has a profound impact (and on just how difficult it is to do that work). JudgeSim takes a job that is extremely complex, reduces it to an absurd rubber-stamp exercise, and doesn't even give me the opportunity to rant at the police or the witnesses for their obscene bungling.

Ultimately, it leaves me with an unquenchable thirst for ranting at someone for their obscene bungling, and the developer will have to do. This court will refer the matter to Valve Corporation and seek the maximum penalty.

Second case, a dude with illegal substances, I sentenced the right amount of penalties and I was jailed because a dice at the end of the trial said so? Lmao no thank you, what a shame, since the idea seemed interesting.

The game is a tad unclear. Doing things exactly as they are listed in the book still lead to me getting arrested. Definitely a neat idea, but the game is a bit buggy and I had it on multiple occasions change my decisions for me. 4/10