CONTEMPT

A courtroom where the trial is the fight. Opposing counsel raises an argument. You have a fraction of a second to name the objection that answers it — and only the right one works.

Land it and they lose composure, you gain a document, and the jury moves your way. Name the wrong class, or move too early, and you are overruled: silenced, standing there, while the case drifts away from you.

You can also just hit them. It always lands. It also costs a point of the judge's patience, and three points is a mistrial.

Free, plays in your browser, no account, nothing to install.

Two systems, and one of them is a loan

The legal game is an economy: objections pay you evidence, evidence buys the points you press, points move the verdict. The strike sits outside it — it costs nothing you own, which is exactly why it costs something you cannot buy.

• Object — 1 2 3 4, one key per class. Hearsay, Speculation, Relevance, Leading.
• Press — spend a document to make your own point. It has a wind-up, so starting one while an argument is landing means you eat the argument.
• Strike — always works, always +1 contempt. Two clean legal actions pay one point back, so a strike you can afford is tempo you stole. A third one you cannot is the end of the case.
• Stance — lean in for a harder press and a narrower window, stand back for the reverse.

Five opponents, and each one adds an idea

Not a bigger number — a new thing to read.

• The Intern telegraphs everything. Two classes in play.
• Corporate Counsel starts arguments he never finishes. When one begins to waver, take your hand off the key.
• The Firebrand is fast, and standing back will not save you.
• The Old Bull builds arguments in pairs — answer the first, then read the second — and baits you into swinging.
• The State's Champion does all of it, and counts your contempt for you.

The burden of proof is yours

The jury drifts toward the prosecution on its own, and faster the further behind you are. Standing still loses. At a hundred and fifty seconds they come back with whoever is ahead.

A mistrial is not a restart

Win a case and the court sets a precedent — one of eight permanent rule changes, three offered at a time, kept for the rest of the career. Lose one and you keep every precedent you have won and take the same case again. Your progress saves in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.

Made honestly

No ads, no accounts, no tracking and no network calls — the game asks the internet for nothing and saves one key in your browser.

AI disclosure: code and text written with AI assistance. The seven character portraits are AI-generated pixel art from our own prompts; every tiled courtroom surface is generated procedurally by our own tool with no image model involved. Sounds: no — every sound in the game is arithmetic in a build script, no samples and no audio model.

This is fiction. The objections are named after real ones and behave nothing like them. Do not take a courtroom strategy from a video game.

More free browser games and dev tools from Core Systems Asset Factory: csaf.itch.io

More from CSAF

More free browser games from the same studio:

• UNDERSTORY
• THE WARM ROOM
• TAKEN AS READ
• SPALL

Everything else we make is at csaf.itch.io.