I said I’d be starting off with a game that’s very obscure. So my first pick was Aviary Attorney.

When I got this game, I was in a serious Ace Attorney craze. I loved the games and watched Let’s Plays of them on YouTube constantly. However, I never really got to play them myself. They weren’t cheap and my mom had more important things to do with her money.

So I went on Steam, looking for a game that was similar to Ace Attorney and I found this.

History

As the name might suggest Aviary Attorney is like Ace Attorney, but with birds. The game was created by newly-formed British team, Sketchy Logic, and was funded by Kickstarter in 2014.

The art style is based off the works of J. J. Grandeville, a 19th century French lithographer, who was famous for his caricatures of anthropomorphic animals. As such, the whole game is set in 19th century France and all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals.

It was released on Steam in late 2015 and has a 90% positive rating. Apart from the obvious Ace Attorney connection this game has, what about it earned such glowing reception? That’s what we’re here to find out.

Gameplay

The story stars Jayjay Falcon and his sidekick Sparrowson. The two are 19th century lawyers trying to scrape together a living. The two of them get assigned to murder cases where they have to go to the crime scene, collect testimonies, gather evidence. Then on the day of the trial, you need to cross-examine witnesses and present evidence to get your client off the hook.

This all sounds pretty familiar and you’re probably wondering to yourself “Alright, weird setting aside, how is this game not just a cheap Ace Attorney knock-off?”

Well this is the really interesting part. You actually have a limited amount of time to gather evidence. What this means is that if you don’t get everything you need and know exactly where you need to go, you can miss out on important evidence.

Now don’t worry, the game makes it pretty clear where you have to go so you won’t be banging your head trying to figure things out. But that also leads to the other thing that makes the game different from AA.

You can lose cases.

Really, in Ace Attorney, if you mess up, you get a game over and have to start the game all over again. In this game, there’s no such thing as a game over. If you flub your argument, or don’t have the right evidence in hand, your client can go to jail and you have to live with that. There are no do-overs in this game (well, technically you can go back and literally do it over but still). If you continue a story where you lose a trial and your client goes to jail, you get a sense that actions in this game have consequences.

This theme really shines through by the games final chapter.

Final Chapter. Please Skip to Conclusion to avoid spoilers.

In the penultimate level of the game, Séverin Cocorico, the Edgeworth to Jayjay’s Phoenix, gets kidnapped by Leonie Beaumort, the daughter of a man he sent to jail years ago and died in prison.

Jayjay and Sparrowson find Cocorico and you are presented with two options: help him or leave.

Leaving causes Jayjay to lose faith in the justice system and become a terrorist called the Viridian Killer. The result is the death of Jayjay and Inspector Juste Velorti, or as I like to call him “Mean Gumshoe.”

Choosing to stay and help causes an impromptu trial between you and Leonie over Cocorico’s fate. This trial depends on a vital piece of evidence that ends up being played up like a side mission.

Miss this evidence and Cocorico is killed while you become forced to join Leonie as she kickstarts a revolution to unseat the king.

If you have it with you, Cocorico is saved and the revolution instead becomes a trial where you determine that the king is too incompetent to do his job and is exiled from France.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing to take from Aviary Attorney, it’s that there’s a clear difference between imitation and inspiration. While the actual gameplay may not be radically different, the game does enough to make it unique from AA. And the story and characters all have a life of their own, completely separate from Phoenix or any other characters. Except maybe Cocorico.

Overall, the game makes itself stand out with a theme of actions having consequences. Something I never saw from Phoenix Wright and am quite happy to see.

Do I think this game is better than Phoenix Wright? Not really. But any fan of that AA will likely be a fan of this AA.