Steam now has a store page for Singing Attorney: Verdict by Midnight, the musical courtroom mystery adventure from Japanese indie studio MANICHI GAMES. The page opened on November 11, so players can wishlist the title and follow its progress toward launch.
The premise is unusual for a legal drama: in this courtroom, both sides argue in song. Players take the role of Kanade, a rookie defense attorney who wakes at the sound of a gavel with no memory of who she is. Her client is Tsubame, a streamer who holds a speedrun record and stands accused of murdering a famous game director inside a festival demo room. The trophy used as the weapon carries only her fingerprints.
Play follows three steps. Probe testimony line by line to catch statements that clash with the evidence, then Rebut with the item that contradicts them. Words gathered in court are slotted into the blanks of the Record, and the finished deduction becomes the lyric Kanade sings back at the prosecutor. There are no rhythm-game inputs, three difficulty levels, an optional Self Musical mode that lets you sing along with a microphone, and a Defense Score card that records hints used, damage taken and whether you guessed the culprit early.
Episode 1 runs about two and a half hours and is planned as free, listed at $0.00 USD, with a Steam demo arriving in 2026 in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean. The store page currently shows a planned release of 2027 and no price for the full game on the US store yet. A trailer and the official site are both live, and the studio says Let’s Plays and streams are welcome as long as the culprit stays out of titles and thumbnails.
One disclosure worth noting: the developer states that generative AI was used for character, background and evidence art, music, songs and translation, with scripts, dialogue and code selected, expanded and revised from multiple AI drafts.
Sarah Chen searches the quieter corners of PC gaming for remarkable ideas that bigger releases leave behind. She covers indie games, platform updates, and overlooked releases for SteamGamer.net. If a strange little game has twelve reviews, an unforgettable mechanic, and absolutely no marketing budget, Sarah has probably already finished it—and is explaining why everyone else should care.
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