Aviary Attorney takes a dive into the deep end of surreality. Mystery, subterfuge and murder are around every corner and it’s your responsibility to investigate and defend the accused. So take one last gulp of Cabernet into your beak and let’s get to it. Oh yes, did I mention you were a bird?
Developer: Sketchy Logic
Price: $14.99
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with PC copy for review
Kickstarted to 270% of its original ₤7000 goal, Aviary Attorney garnered a large amount of interest from the indie gaming crowd; successfully cornering the niche of bird-based lawyering in Paris, 1848. An artful adaptation of classical music and art combine to tell a story of deceit and intrigue underneath a consistent layer of eccentric humor and bird puns.
You experience this bizarre alternate history through the eyes of Jay-jay Falcon, an alcoholic falcon. Who, against all good judgment, continues to be hired as a defense attorney to those in dire straits with the law. Your assistant and partner in-crime is Sparrowson, a whimsical and hilariously written character who drives a large portion of the comic relief. Together you travel Paris interviewing witnesses and examining crime scenes while never pausing in your continuous banter. Once your days of investigation and preparation are complete, you face off against the prosecution in court and attempt to prove your client innocent.
Accounting for the style of Aviary Attorney, the narrative is a critical aspect. A game about investigating and solving murders hinges upon the thrill of uncovering evidence and piecing the story together in court. There is a very delicate balance to maintain between a predictable and uninteresting sequence of events and a completely illogical, counter-intuitive mess. The difference is either going through the motions to express an obvious answer or making claims and decisions randomly due to your lack of direction. I can’t emphasize enough the importance that the developers, Sketchy Logic, hit the mark when writing these cases. These stories should be experienced first-hand, so rest assured the entirety of this review is spoiler-free.
From delving into the lives of the social elite to scouring the gutters for the impoverished, Falcon and Sparrowson rub shoulders with some incredible characters, all of which are anthropomorphic animals. A whole menagerie from the animal kingdom make an appearance, each with their own over-the-top personality and beautiful illustration to match. A large amount of dialogue helps you begin to grasp their nature and provides insight into their possible motivations. What makes this character cohesion even more impressive is that all the artwork is taken from a 19th Century French caricaturist J.J. Grandville. These surreal and creative images have been brought to life, not only by animation, but through how they are written. Sketchy Logic created characters and based their entire narrative around images that were penned to paper roughly 200 years ago.
Mechanically, the Aviary Attorney can be compared to games such as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. There are three main elements of gameplay; interviews, scene investigation and courtroom battles. Once you have been hired for the case, your first stop is usually to converse with your client in the dreaded La Conciergerie, a famous Parisian prison. This opens up a number of leads that are displayed across the overworld map at certain locations. The key element here is time. Each visit to an area takes one day and you only have a certain number of days before trial. Choosing your travels carefully and exploring each one fully is crucial.
You spend the majority of your time interviewing suspects, witnesses and other miscellaneous leads. More often than not, it is simply a case of clicking through their entire dialogue tree for every scrap of information and evidence. While this may not sound very entertaining, this is also where the majority of life and humor is injected into the game. At times, you need to be delicate with the interviewee and any misstep could see them running for the hills and leaving you high and dry without a piece of evidence.
Scene investigation is a very simple part of the game. You are presented with a room, beautifully illustrated in the game’s style, and you move your cursor across the screen until an object is highlighted. You continue to do this until you come across an object providing a piece of evidence. I may have appreciated these segments more if there was some element of challenge, perhaps in the style of heavily cluttered hidden object games or if the scene was under a time constraint. Instead, it is an idle exercise of clicking on everything in sight.
Finally the courtroom battles, easily the most exciting and entertaining moment of each case. After hearing testimony from the prosecution we are given the opportunity to cross-examine their witness. By picking specific sections of their testimony we are able to present evidence that disproves their claims. There is a certain amount of unintended difficulty in selecting the correct phrase to dispute with the evidence in hand. At times I knew what my argument was, but had trouble presenting it correctly to court; which I found slightly baffling. In spite of this, there are twists and turns aplenty during each case and I was genuinely surprised at some points.
While the cases were enjoyable to experience, I felt that they erred toward being too linear. Although there is an element of choice (where you go, what dialogue choices you make), I discovered that the story more or less led you to the same spot. Unless, of course, you are being absolutely uncooperative, which does lead to some interesting conversations.
The music is fantastic. Sketchy Logic again draws on legitimate historical sources and provide a score composed by romantic-era composer Camille Saint-Saëns. However pleasant the music, it cannot detract from the sometimes ear-ache inducing speech sound effects. High pitched squeaking and buzzing of a handful of characters were a real disappointment. The large amount of dialogue, regardless how humorous, results in long sections of irritating squeaks. I should note that this issue only applies to certain characters.
The Final Word
Aviary Attorney is a vision to behold, genuinely funny at times (assuming you enjoy a good pun) and has a solid backbone of mechanics. While the crime investigations and some interviews feel unnecessarily simple, the upbeat banter and humorous interactions keep the pace up. Perhaps too linear for some tastes, the cases and world are filled with surreal charm.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
