lil guardsman

content/games/switch/lil-guardsman.md

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+---
+title: "Lil' Guardsman: Papers, Please With Charm"
+date: 2024-06-01T20:45:00+02:00
+score: 3
+game_release_year: 2024
+howlongtobeat_id: 129813
+howlongtobeat_hrs: 7.5
+game_name: "Lil' Guardsman"
+game_developer: 'Hilltop Studios'
+game_genre: "Adventure"
+tags:
+  - adventure
+---
+
+One of my wife's Switch eShop excavations recently yielded _Lil' Guardsman_, a seemingly small and perhaps a bit generic adventure game that's leaning more towards _Papers, Please_ than to [Lost In Play](/games/switch/lost-in-play/), even though Lil the protagonist shares the lush curly hair that fooled me into thinking this was the work of Happy Juice Interactive. Instead, we're served Hilltop Studios' first with a few sausy references to adventure games' greatest leveraging the simplified core mechanics of _Papers, Please_.
+
+If that all makes little---or should I say Lil'?---sense, don't worry. The premise of the game is simple: you are Lil, a twelve year old little girl that's covering for your father's work shift at the guard shed which is the entry point to your bustling city called The Sprawl. It's your responsibility to either admit or deny (and later jail) individuals or groups trying to gain access to the city. You're given three action points that can be used to interrogate, decode, metal detect or X-ray applicants, possibly revealing dark motives and shady packages attempting to be smuggled into the city. 
+
+![](guardshed.jpg "Should I trust this guy's intentions to enter The Sprawl or not?")
+
+Or not. Perhaps you decide to deny someone who would have helped with pressing problems in The Sprawl if you had let them in. Every choice you make has an impact on The Sprawl which is immediately made visible with a pop-up message, and as you make your way through the 12 levels in the game, gradually made painfully obvious, as people start fights, leave or die thanks to your actions. Oops.
+
+The game has numerous ways to do things wrong, but it never hits a dead end: instead, you're simply served a less-optimal ending. You can always enable a special device called the Chronometer 3000 that allows for a limited number of rewinds, should you want to reconsider---but that messes with alternative timelines, so beware! 
+
+Additionally, some actions during your shift at the guard shed immediately leads to a game over screen. If during your night shift a shading looking character calls herself witch and you decide to apply the whip on her, expect her to rip out your heart. The same probably applies for angering a giant tree monster or trying to pickpocket someone carrying too many knives.
+
+![](admitted.jpg "The Bangalorian (hint) was just admitted.")
+
+That said, I regularly misinterpreted what the game expected me to do. Sometimes, the tale of a person at your gate entry seems to suggest you're supposed to admit them, and even though it will yield four out of four stars and earn some extra cash, the concluding stories at the end of each day explaining what the people you've been dealing with have done in The Sprawl end up taking a dark turn. This isn't a game where the choices should be dependent on trail and error (& using the Chronometer to rewind), but I did find myself doing exactly that more often than not. 
+
+Some decisions are easy to take: a knife-yielding menacing looking masked person with blood stains on their shirt should probably be thrown in jail---yet if you do without investigating the why, you'll be penalized as well. The game will then tell you "perhaps something _more_ could be discovered". Do you rewind or shrug? That's up to you. Other decisions are much less obvious, and even though we did our best trying to decipher, we always ended up making the wrong decision. This leads to the game treading on a thin line between very likable and very confusing. 
+
+![](murray.jpg "Wait a minute... Murray, is that you?")
+
+The overall presentation oozes charm even though animations are limited to characters kind of bouncing in place except for the in-between levels parts where Lil walks around in the few locations inside The Sprawl that gradually open up. These interjections from your guardsman duty serve as moments to progress the story and even introduce the odd blind date show where as always _Your Choices Affect The Future Of The Sprawl_. Seemingly small decisions end up having a big ripple effect that will eventually directly impact the end game.
+
+The big question is: is this an adventure game? The _Murray, Is That You?_ joke aside, it's hard to answer with a sound yes: there's no inventory management, there are not many locations to visit, and there's really no quest to resolve except for covering for your dad and making sure things don't crash and burn---which they will anyway, eventually. 
+
+What _Lil Guardsman_ does offer, though, is plenty of charm, humor, and family sentiment, wrapped as a simplified deductive adventure set in a fantasy universe. Overall, we've had fun playing through the twelve levels taking seven-something hours, but the infrequent miscommunication between our good intentions and the game's supposed directions prevented me from enjoying it more.
+
+![](wedding.jpg "At the royal wedding, speaking to guests.")
+
+_Lil Guardsman_ is a game that wants to be replayed multiple times, just to test out different tools on different subjects and see what it does for kicks and giggles, or just to see what would have happened if you would have rejected that one guy. If you like _Papers, Please_ decision-making and can withstand a bit of upside-down deduction that sometimes points in the wrong direction, do give this lil' enjoyable game a go.