Of the Devil deals out debut commercial installment on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Free first standalone case for episodic cyberpunk legal mystery also available to download

If you took the legal defense premise of the Ace Attorney series, blended it with the sci-fi investigative trappings of AI: The Somnium Files and added in a dash of visual novel-styled gameplay and zany minigame confrontations of Danganronpa, you just might end up with something like of the Devil, a new series of standalone episodic cyberpunk mysteries by nth Circle Studios whose first commercial installment has just been released. 

It's the year 2086, and Big Brother is watching everywhere. With lights in every dark corner, a "camera in every device and a half dozen devices on every citizen," it's virtually impossible to get away with violent crimes anymore – for humans or androids, as "there are tracking implants in every cybernetic and location tags on every bullet." The good news is that crime in the city is way down and "people are safer now than at any other time in history." The bad news, besides the oppresssive government overwatch, is that any wrongly accused defendant who makes it all the way to trial stands almost zero chance of being proven innocent. It would take a great lawyer to succeed in such circumstances – someone like Morgan, a "devil-may-care" public defender who "weaves her way through gaps in the surveillance state and out of the trenches of corporate warfare" in order to free her clients... and hopefully keep her own secrets from coming to light in the process. 

Designed as a series of standalone mysteries, of the Devil features a dry sense of neo-noir humor in its unvoiced writing, to go with a slick and stylish look resembling a graphic novel with plenty of cinematic flourish. Interspersing first-person point-and-click investigative scenes with probing conversations with an eclectic cast of characters, the game sees players examine augmented reality crime scenes for clues, interrogate persons of interest, and ultimately defend Morgan's clients from prosecution in the courtroom. To succeed you'll need to continually unlock new search terms and questions by thoroughly examining and reading everything you find. So far so familiar to fans of Spike Chunsoft and Capcom, but what makes it all particularly distinctive here is the card-themed presentation. New clues uncovered count as "credit" that accrues in the form of poker chips being added to your mobile datapad. Then, when it's time, you'll be able to "read your opponents' hands, call their bluffs, avoid their haymakers and slam down the right evidence to upend their logic."

The four-person indie development team hasn't gone all-in just yet, releasing only the first commercial installment today on Steam for Windows PC. It can be purchased exclusively as DLC that requires the free Episode 0 to play, which itself has been newly upgraded with additional refinements and tells a separate story about a defendent believed to be "the Heartbreak Killer." It's a substantial experience in its own right, though Episode 1 promises to be three or four times longer than its freeware predecessor. 

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