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All Rise channels Ace Attorney, Disco Elysium and Slay the Spire in a courtroom card battle to save the planetStarted life as an effort to fund real-life legal battles against corporate polluters
Started life as an effort to fund real-life legal battles against corporate polluters
Image credit:Anticiplay
Image credit:Anticiplay
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All Rise emerged from the legal efforts of Dutch climate activist group Fossielvrij - ‘Fossil Free’ - to get pension fund giant ABP to divest €15 billion from investment in fossil fuels. While preparing to raise support for its court case against ABP in 2021, Fossielvrij began to explore the idea of a video game about climate law as a way of generating wider interest in its campaign.
The result is a game that Fossielvrij’s Dr. Joost Vervoortdescribesas a combination of Phoenix Wright’s comic take on legal proceedings,Disco Elysium’s narrative world-building andSlay the Spire’s deckbuilding cardplay.
Image credit:Anticiplay
Conversation both in and outside of the courtroom takes the form of card battles, with different cards and effects being able to target people’s sense of justice, empathy, logic or absurdity through different suits: gut, heart, mind and weird. Even losing a battle can result in a possible benefit, with the outcome of each battle earning a selection of different cards.
The cards gained through exploring the world and meeting with locals all then feed into a showdown in court, which can itself have a variety of possible endings depending on the choices made and cards played.
The game spans a number of chapters focused on different regions of the globe, albeit with what Vervoort said is a ‘sideways speculation’ rather than one-to-one reality to show what might be possible with different efforts. Each chapter is said to be fairly short, encouraging it to be tackled again with a different approach.
Image credit:Anticiplay
Opening chapter The Murdered River is set in the Indian state of Kerala, following lawyer Kuyili as she follows up a successful case to grant the Muziris river legal status as a person with a murder charge against those who led the polluted river to catch fire. Kuyili will encounter corporate executive Rishabh, who may end up anything from a direct rival to more of an ally based on the player’s decisions.
All Rise is currently in development, with a playable prototype looking for funding from both game publishers and philanthropic organisations to bolster the current support of the Dutch government’s creative industry fund. Vervoort said that the team hopes to follow The Murdered River with additional chapters, characters and locations around the world, with the potential to look at new sets and expansions of cards in the future.
