''Aviary Attorney'' is a 2015

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...

in the style of the ''

Ace Attorney ''Ace Attorney'' is a series of visual novel adventure video games developed by Capcom. With storytelling fashioned after legal dramas, the first entry in the series, ''Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney'', was released in 2001; since then, five f ...

'' series. The player takes the role of a defence lawyer, and must investigate crimes and then defend their clients in court.

Gameplay

The game is set in 1848 Paris inhabited by

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

animals, and the player takes the role of Jayjay Falcon, a defence lawyer who must defend a series of clients in court. For each case the player is given a limited number of days to explore various locations around the city of Paris, gathering clues, but also numerous red herrings. The player must then use the results of their investigation to cross examine witnesses at the trial, to try and procure a verdict of not guilty from the jury. The game is composed of a series of cases. The game makes use of public domain works, the character artwork is taken from the caricatures by

J. J. Grandville ''J. The Jewish News of Northern California'', formerly known as ''Jweekly'', is a weekly print newspaper in Northern California, with its online edition updated daily. It is owned and operated by San Francisco Jewish Community Publications In ...

, and its soundtrack includes the music of

Camille Saint-Saëns Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...

Development

The game was developed by Sketchy Logic, and partly financed through a

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

crowdfunding campaign, raising £18,917 towards its development in January 2015. It was released for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

in December 2015. On 30 January 2020, Portugal-based Vertical Reach published a

Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...

port under the title ''Aviary Attorney: Definitive Edition'' in North America and Europe, exclusively via

Nintendo eShop The Nintendo eShop is a digital distribution service powered by the Nintendo Network for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, and by a dedicated online infrastructure for the Nintendo Switch. Launched in June 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS, the eShop was en ...

. In November 2022, Singapore-based publisher Leoful announced they are launching the Nintendo Switch port on 15 December 2022 both digitally and physically for various Asian markets, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, with Japanese and Chinese language support included.

Reception

Critical reception was generally positive, generating a score of 77/100 on reviews aggregation website Metacritic, Eurogamer recommended the game, highlighting the characters as "written with poise and wit, making for laugh-out-loud moments and genuinely exciting revelations". USGamer in their 3.5/5 review, described the artwork and the music as the "perfect accompaniment", but felt the game did not reach the same heights as the ''Ace Attorney'' series. Hardcore Gamer panned the game, giving it 1.5/5. They cited numerous bugs in the initial release, delay in the release of the final chapter, and the brevity of the game as reasons for the low score.

References

External links

* *{{Vndb, id=18850
Steam listing
2015 video games Adventure games Alternate history video games Video games about law Kickstarter-funded video games macOS games Monochrome video games Nintendo Switch games Single-player video games Vertical Reach games Video games about birds Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games set in Paris Video games set in the 19th century Windows games