Game Review: The 12 Jurors

The legal world is no joke, the fate of people lies in the balance and truth and justice are at stake. But the profession is also the butt of jokes for a reason, all too familiar with unscrupulous slicksters with every trick under their sleeve to gain themselves a verdict no matter what.

So, for the consideration of the jury, I will now recount the events of the following game.

The 12 Jurors is a cooperative game for 1-5 people where you try to convince the jury one juror at a time, but this review is based on the solitaire version. The main game consists of 8 levels worth of 18 trials that you progress through. For each trial the goal is to land a guilty verdict by convincing every juror to a unanimous decision. You start with three jurors in play and in each turn you play a card of the same suit to a juror, the second card played on the same juror sets the direction of the sequence(ascending or descending) of numbers said row of cards must make. If you don't want to play a card you discard a card, if you can't play any card you replace your hand.

A juror is convinced if a certain number of matched cards is played to it, kings 4; queens 3 and jacks 2. Once a juror is convinced it is removed from the row of juries and another one is brought in, this continues on until either all jurors are convinced, a win, or your run out of cards to play, a loss. In subsequent levels you get extra actions to help you through the extra challenges of a new set of starting jurors and in two levels card play restrictions.

These additional actions include being able to play a card of the same color on a juror, swapping cards between jurors and even a wild card joker. The moveset expands when you level up and has no limits on use.

Foresight doesn't matter much in this game but you should keep open favorable card plays you don't want to skip. Holding cards is a terrible idea cause trying to wait for a good play will get you penalized with a short suit. Some actions allow you to open up possibilities so use them wisely to avoid bad forces. 

The solitaire version lets you have at least one joker(in multiplayer this only appears at the last level) in your deck, a powerful tactical tool.

To convince jurors of a suit you need exactly nine cards, with only 10 cards of each available per suit to make this possible, some tactical play is necessary and this makes the first trial seem hard as you have no special actions, but even with the special actions you are still limited by the deck.

Each level's trial's jury starts with jurors of certain criteria, making opening play in each game different enough to affect the middlegames. A couple of them even include special rules to throw a wrench in the gameplay. While there is no big life-changing trial at the end of all the levels, there is a decent sense of progress that doesn't make the game feel repetitive.

The game can be played without levels, the jurors are selected randomly and determine any special conditions. Special actions are usable only once per game.