How do you solve a problem like using AI for video games? That’s the question every megacorp is trying to figure out right now, but amongst the countless ways that it really can’t or really shouldn’t be used – like, don’t use AI as an excuse for laying off human employees, please and thank you – there are a few areas that generative large language models can shine. Enter Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg.

This is the headlining game from Amazon Luna’s relaunch and push towards more casual gaming with GameNight – alongside a bunch of board game and digital game classics adapted to it – and it’s absolutely got the right kind of hook and broader audience potential. Snoop Dogg presides over a video game twist on Judge Judy or Judge John Hodgeman, where players turn up with a plaintiff and a defendant, there’s the ability to call upon expert witnesses, and then a judgement is handed down. Eminently possible on TV or in podcasting with curated cases appearing in each episode and real grievances, but nigh on impossible for traditional game design, and heck, there’s only one Snoop Dogg!

As with all of the titles in the GameNight library, you play Courtroom Chaos with your phone, logging into a web portal using a code in a fashion that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever Jackbox’d. Two players are assigned to be plaintiff and defendant, and asked to give some kind of personal details, speaking them into your phone. Judge Snoop Dogg then jumbles this all up and comes up with a case.

In our test case, it was two of the players being game developers, with the defendant accused of having inserted some rogue character creation tools that were harming development. You’re all assigned into teams from this, with the other players able to choose what kind of witness they are – eyewitness, expert witness, for example. You’re called in turn to give testimony, trying to play to win AI Snoop Dogg’s favour and convince him to side with you. You can strategise with your argument, maybe lean in on statistics and plausible fabrications as you play into your assigned role, and it was always quite funny to see how AI Snoop would react, the build up as the server chewed through our long and rambling arguments adding to the suspense.

Let’s say he’s maybe not as consistent as you’d want from an actual judge. One moment, he didn’t like my statistics, but then he loved my testimony in the final judgment, and that kind of shows the still capricious nature of LLMs in general, which Amazon will look to be tuning and training as much as possible.

It’s an enjoyable game, though, and I can absolutely see people having a laugh while messing around with it, in the same way that people toy with generative AI tools more generally. It helps, of course, that it will be bundled in with the Amazon Prime memberships, accessible wherever you get Amazon’s streaming platform, and that’s all key to Amazon Luna’s new pitch.

This game, and a whole bunch of others, are just there and waiting for you to stream and play, if you’re a Prime subscriber. In contrast to Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, the relaunch of Amazon Luna will only have a limited selection of big budget AAA controller-based games. There’s still big hitters like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hogwarts Legacy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, but GamesNight is the dedicated section for games you can just play with your phone.

On day one there’s 29 GameNight titles, including a bunch of Jackbox standalone classics, as well as some specially adapted games like Tetris Effect: Connected and Garfield Kart 2, and board games like Cluedo. Courtroom Chaos isn’t Amazon’s only original effort, though.

Flappy Golf Party is…. well, it’s Flappy Bird meets minigolf. All the players have a bird-like golfball and there’s an enclosed stage to race through, flapping to the right or to the left, gliding, and trying to get to the hole first. It’s simple, fun and easily accessible, and honestly I wanted to play more than just the few holes we got to try!

The same can be said of Draw & Guess, which is a drawing riff on a game of telephone. You’ll constantly cycle between drawing from a prompt on your phone, and then guessing what the prompt someone else was given from their drawing. That guess is then passed along, and around we go several times before we see the results and vote. I just wish there was a little more panache to this game’s presentation, taking a few leafs out of Jackbox’s book to have multiple rounds, some quirky scoring, a break in the middle before mixing up themes. As it is, it feels a little too simplistic… but that certainly helps it be very immediate and easy to play.

Courtroom Chaos is clearly what Amazon want to hang their hat on. It’s got the production values, the big name star, the inventive use of AI chat to power it, and it shows the potential of playing games in the cloud. How Amazon follows that up for GameNight will be fascinating to see. They’ve promised that new games will be added regularly, and this library could easily become a go-to avenue for a family gaming session where you don’t have to worry too much about irregular gamers feeling excluded by learning gamepad buttons.