I think the game sticks to the theme in the narrative department, but I'm not sure I see how "the game is a liar". The characters in it are, from various perspectives, but I'm not sure the game itself is.
Playing this I got Ace Attorney vibes. I'm actually a big fan of the series. I have every DS game of the series I think. Anyway, the biggest and hardest to avoid flaw of this type of games is preposterous narratives. Some of the Ace Attorney cases have this more than others, very few have none of these issues. In your game, the narrative has it that the croupier is switching the decks. I then give him a fake deck WITH incriminating cheating capabilities. I then I accuse him of using a cheating deck, because he wasn't able to tell the difference between his cheating deck (which I haven't demonstrated exists), and mine. Practically speaking, this makes the protagonist into somebody who's planting incriminating evidence to frame somebody else. Not a great look for the cop. Unless you guys were planning on revealing that the protagonist is actually a crooked cop... I don't see how this makes any sense. In fact, it makes so little sense, that you yourselves had to resort to a really weird situation where THE CROUPIER insists on giving the protagonist a second chance to expose his cheating, which is obviously an irresponsible and absurd thing to do.
I'm not sure I'm conveying the point here, but the main issue with your first puzzle, as well as many similar famous games that have similar puzzles, is the implausibility of the circumstance, accompanied by a protagonist that is forced to act like a fool. I feel quite upset as a player when the character I control does something stupid in a cutscene. I feel even more unhappy when I have to do something stupid myself, that I know is stupid, just so I can get the game to progress. If you're planning on continuing development, I suggest you invest substantial time in the logical (and legal) unfolding of the dialogues and events, so these problems are averted as much as possible.
The graphics were a little rought here and there, for instance, the croupier's waist overlaps the table, there's some blurriness here and there, but generally they look coherent and stylish. I enjoyed that. The possible exception may be the cards in the inventory. They looked higher res than the rest. Overall, I enjoyed looking at the game.
The audio was excellent. The music is entertaining and fitting of the context. It also loops seamlessly. The sounds worked well too.
I really liked the menus, dialogue interations and the general execution of the game. For instance, dialogue had a speed setting, could be skipped, was confirmed at each bubble, which allowed me time to read at my leisure. Well done from that perspective. Unfortunately, there is no category in the ratings for "the game is well made and works as intended", so this is just an observation. :) But I really appreciate it when devs put effort in making their game communicate well to their players.
The last this I will say is, I would strongly recommend you get an English speaking friend to quickly proofread your dialogue before you finish. I know you ran out of time, but, while decent, the dialogues suffered from several expressions and lexical choices that made little sense in English. Nothing huge, and understandable for a jam, but English is lingua franca, and most of your audience will read English. In a dialogue based game, it's advisable to find a way to optimise this aspect.
Viewing post in Gambler's Justice jam comments
Thank you so much for your time to write this. I think that the best way to improve is to learn with your mistakes, and when people point them it becomes so much easier to analise what is wrong.
As for the theme, i don't know, where do we draw the line to determine if an element is the game or not? if the ground is fake, is the scenario a liar or the game? Is it the code then? what a character speaks on the dialogue bubble is somewhat determined by code too, so what is it? I personally think everything in the game, is the game. This theme is complex and can be interpreted in many ways, maybe this is bad because it gets harder to define exactly what fits or not the theme.
I never played Ace Attorney games, but i know them, my friend did all the writing and puzzles, i was just agreeing with him, did not look from this perspective and it doesn't make sense at all, i agree :x
Yeah, the art could be more polished, we had to rush to implement it on the last day. I see a big improvement in comparison with our previous projects though.
I did all the sounds, thank you for the compliments, i have been composing music for one year and a half now, and to be able to make something that fits the game and see people enjoying it makes me very proud, thank you.
Maybe it was a bad idea to write an english visual novel for a jam with all the team members being non-english speakers, i agree that we need a person to do this when necessary.
Again, thank you for the amazing review, feedbacks like these are the best, people tend to comment just what they like and this can be misleading. Playtesting with target audience is very important to get this right, with a good script for it of course, but not always possible during a jam.