• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Gamma Minus
• Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
• Release Date: December 20, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by Daedalic Entertainment on behalf of Gamma Minus. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Rough Justice ‘84 is a “single-player board game-inspired strategy game” in which you run a private security agency. Gameplay involves using dice to determine agent stats, cards for their gear, and solving puzzles such as cryptograms. The story takes place in Seneca City starting in 1984. You play as a so-called “super cop” who had cracked down on corruption in the department. He was framed and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was eventually exonerated.

After the beginning of your character’s prison term, the crime rate skyrocketed, which apparently resulted in the Seneca Enforcement Act, which called for the removal of any bureaucratic red tape for regulating private agencies. Now these agencies pick up on the police department’s slack.

A former coworker of yours now runs one of those agencies, and he’s asked for your help to keep his agency going by using your name recognition. Now you’ll work with him to manage the agents and their cases – and hopefully make some money.

You can accept multiple types of cases for the agency, such as security, repossession, fugitive recovery cases, and more; each case type is managed by one case officer. The agency only has a few case officers in the beginning, and you’ll have to unlock more. Accept a caseload from one of them to work one or more cases of the same type, and then it’s time to hire some agents.

Agents are considered freelancer employees, and can only be hired temporarily for a few cases. (You’d think it would be smarter to hire permanent employees who you know and trust for a law enforcement-related job, but I’ll “roll” with it. 🎲) An agent’s tier level affects their stats and pay. They have their own portraits, backgrounds and traits, gear slots, and action points.

At first, you can only hire one agent at a time. Money is tight, so you’ll have to weigh agent stats against their hiring fee. Their shifts end when their action points hit zero, so it’s important to consider which agents will give you more work for your money.

Travel in between the office and each case takes time, which may result in the caseload expiring. It also costs action points based on distance as well, so it may be better to hire an agent with 12 action points unless the one with 8 has much better stats and a lower fee.

Once you send the agent out to work, you get to choose which case they start first. When they arrive at their destination, you only have a small window of time to advise them on their course of action. If you don’t make the decision before time runs out, you automatically fail the case.

I didn’t like this because it was hard for me to quickly switch between agents, read the case again, and check over which stat to use. (I think touch controls would have been helpful here.) Usually they offer you the choice of using one of two stats on the case.

If you choose the option involving agent stats instead of a puzzle, you’ll roll one or more dice to determine the result of the case. Say that you must choose between using the perception or strength stat, with your agent having a 2 in perception and 1 in strength. You’ll want to choose perception in that case because the stat value determines how many dice are used in the stat roll. Something important to note is that agents may not have any points in a stat, which means they get no dice for it and would automatically fail a mission.

Cases in different categories will require certain dice roll values (i.e. 4 or more) for successful results. You need to roll that value 3 times in a row at minimum on each case starting with tier 1 cases. The required number of successful rolls goes up for higher tier cases. It’s possible – but less likely – to succeed with a single die. You can use an agent’s action points to add some dice to your roll attempts. But if you don’t meet the roll requirements, you fail the case.

Somehow I ended up with really bad luck and failed a bunch of cases. I did wish that we could continue to use an agent’s action points for more attempts at a case after failing. It was pretty frustrating to completely fail a case when I’d rolled two successes. Rolling a 6 with two dice results in a “critical success” – why can’t we get some kind of “barely succeeded” result for rolling most of the required numbers?

For the most part I think I preferred the puzzle options for solving cases. I wasn’t amazing at a few of them, but I could handle the majority of them pretty easily. You can take some time to go to the training center and practice each puzzle mini game before you face them in the field.

There are 20 interesting “puzzles” in the game. The hotwiring mini game was one of my favorites once I got the hang of it, and the VCR tracking puzzle, while harder, was a nice bit of nostalgia. Other mini games – like the triangulator – were less enjoyable. I had trouble with the x-ray puzzle because the objects were hard for me to see quickly and clearly as the baggage rolled across the conveyor belt. (Similarly, the game’s text is extremely hard to read due to its minuscule size.)

I’d usually go with the puzzle options for cases that offered a choice between the mini games and stat-based dice rolls. I found that I was more successful that way. Still, having a retry option for the puzzles would have been nice. But with more successes I earned more rewards; these include money, reputation, experience, loyalty, and action points.

It felt almost impossible to build up my funds even when I was successful. I restarted the game twice because of bad luck and not fully understanding how everything worked. By the time I started my third attempt, I decided to take out a loan to see if that helped solve my cash flow problem. It kept me afloat for a while, but the deadline to repay the loan was a mere 2 days, so I ended up defaulting. I don’t think the jobs pay enough.

Since agents have to recharge after running out of action points, I’d have to hire more agents to keep working on caseloads. I never quite managed to hire the right agents with the right stats, as I couldn’t view case requirements before taking caseloads. So I’d waste money on agents whose stats weren’t high enough for the required dice rolls.

I couldn’t afford to pay for more agent slots or even additional gear for them. Agents start with two gear slots, and you can purchase more of those as well. But I couldn’t afford anything more than paying my agents. Gear can be used to help agents with dice rolls, and you can get higher level gear if you upgrade your reputation with case officers. However, case failures decrease your reputation with them, so for me it was an uphill battle.

I tried my best to get into Rough Justice ‘84. I liked a lot of the ideas behind it. The art style and soundtrack worked for me, and I liked that there was voice acting. I just think that some things could have been explained better, and that the game could have been more accessible with larger text (and perhaps an untimed mode for puzzles). If I had better luck with dice rolls and it wasn’t so hard to make money I think it would have been a better experience for me.