I'm not sure how I feel about this game, it's not a bad game but for some reason it just didn't really click with me.  Playing as a kid trying to collect details to save your parents from jail sounds like a neat idea in theory but unfortunately the lack of real detective work made it not as fun as it could've been.  If it had been more about finding clues and piecing the crime together it would've been awesome, but since you just find clues and don't even get to learn a lot about them it changes the game from a detective game to a 'find all the clue pieces' game.  The fact that there's only one obvious villain during each play through takes away all the fun of solving the case, since it's clear who is the bad guy once you talk to the mail kid or bartender.

Maybe not a major problem for other people, but I had issues with the lighting.  It was so dark in places that I could barely see, and I think the lighting system was the reason that there were so many loading screens (which I just don't expect in an rpg maker game).

The writing could do with some more polish.  There were quite a few spelling mistakes and awkward sentences (some of which can be enjoyed in my play through as I try to say them).  For a game so focused on the writing and story, it's a shame that those mistakes showed up.

This is a review for the IGMC 2018 Secret Santa event.

Full disclosure, I've never been a fan of point-and-click, interactive adventure games, so I'm probably not the target audience for this game. In any case, I played through the entire game once and achieved the true ending. 

While it wasn't a critical issue, there were a fair number of glaring mapping/passability issues. To be fair, a lot of these might not have even been noticed in a normal RPG. However, given that the core of this game is to click on random stuff and talk to people, these bugs become magnified and detract from the overall polish and experience a lot more than they would've otherwise. 

The use of dynamic lighting was advertised as a main feature of the game, but its implementation was not user-friendly. When the lighting changes at the 30-minute mark, the city map becomes nearly impossible to see. I had to adjust the brightness setting on my monitor to be able to see where to go.

The game's story was understandably limited in scope due to the restrictions of the jam, but the issue with Judged for Crime's narrative unfortunately extends beyond just its length. There are three main issues that could use some improvement:

1) Grammar and (writing) Style. In the same way that the mapping bugs are emphasized by the point-and-click aspect of the game, having poor grammar and writing in a text-centric game also severely hinders the experience. 

2) Characterization (or lack thereof). The characters in the game are extremely flat. Between the grammar issues and the inconsistent character speech patterns, it was difficult to identify with and therefore invest in any of the characters. The worst offender(s) were probably the main character's parents; while reading their dialog during the visit in the dungeon, there was a moment when I seriously thought that this whole ordeal was some sort of exaggerated act that the parents were putting up to teach the MC some sort of lesson.

3) Logic. Every work of fiction asks its audience for the suspension of disbelief, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, Judged for Crime asks for more than that, it asks that logic and common sense be thrown out the window as well. This might okay if the game was highly abstract or fantastical and could be sustained on its own rules and systems. However, this game is neither a high-fantasy adventure nor a supernatrual horror, it is a mystery that asks the audience for logical thinking and deduction. Between the premise, the setting, and character dialog, there were just too many instances where behaviors of characters are unbelievable. 

All in all, while the game had a beginning and an end, and there weren't any game-breaking bugs that I encountered in my playthrough, the experience felt lackluster and unpolished. There was definitely a lot of missed opportunities, especially considering that the game was published a full 6 days before the end of the competition (20% of the whole contest duration).

The core idea is good. There's a couple other entries that experimented with investigation as well, but I think this is an area that could use more experimentation. That said, I don't think this execution is good. You've set up a story-based setup with mechanics that encourage ignoring the story. Even if the timer isn't very strict, it still means the player have a vested interesting in skipping as much as they can. This runs completely counter to the point of investigation, which would normally be to enjoy thinking through the story. On top of that, the evidence isn't even explained to the player when they get it. I didn't finish the game, but I got 3 pieces of evidence that the items menu claimed were proof of people being related to the incident, but no indication of what the evidence actually talked about.

On a more technical side, your timer seems to go by real time passed, rather than game speed. I don't know if RMMV can support it, but such a timer is better off going by in-game time. Using the real-life time passed means that the player is punished in the case that the game lags (which was happening the entire time I had the character outside). Also, the hiding space for the brunette girl didn't make sense with the hitboxes for the other buildings.