Game Review: (not) Guilty (Mobile)

(not) Guilty is a text adventure that sees you end up in prison accused of murdering someone. As well as fighting your own case you’ll have to integrate with the factions that control the prison just to survive.

Can you not only survive but beat the case against you?

What sounds like a fun & interesting premise is ruined by some serious translation issues. While credit can be given for the detail & effort put in these issues are hilariously bad. So much so that it takes you completely out of the game.

The concept is very simple & game play is very minimal. You really don’t have much to actually do beyond choosing your responses to questions & actions. Often though, they are so black & white in style that there is little room for error. Especially if you’re looking to finish the game having beaten the rap.

We’re talking about having options such as to “thank the warden” or tell him to “fuck off”. Only one is going to help you. There are very few grey areas where you even need to think about what your response should be. Add that the more positive response is always at the top & you can pretty much just keep hitting that to get through the game in record time.

There is a lot of text to read & with the already stated translation problems it often isn’t much fun to slog your way through the pages of text.

Things do get more interesting once you’re in the prison as you get a respect percentage that you need to keep tying to raise. This adds some extra challenge but again, mostly positive responses will see this go up with minimal effort.

It’s also pretty confusing just how the percentage is worked out as at one stage I had mine reading 84.3999999999999%. What?

Is it worth 99p? Just about because it is lengthy & effort was clearly made at trying something a little different within the text adventure/role paying genre.