Lil’ Guardsman

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

We’re not going to be able to get through a review of Lil’ Guardsman without talking about the elephant in the room, so let’s address it right upfront. I think it’s fair to say that one of the more influential games to see release from an indie developer is Papers, Please. Making players not only solve puzzles but face ethical dilemmas while deciding who gets the stamp of approval and who gets denied has since made its way into numerous games, with each putting its own stamp on that formula (ha).

Not Tonight took this formula in an even more overtly political direction, exploring a possible dystopian future in the United Kingdom if (or, in retrospect, when) Brexit came to pass. Peace, Death! went for a more simplistic approach, dropping the serious story and ethical stuff completely and simply focusing on the sorting gameplay. And other games like Death and Taxes and Grammarian Ltd used the concept as a springboard to head off into their own unique directions.

However, with all of these games (and more) that were clearly inspired by Papers, Please, I think Lil’ Guardsman is the first one that I feel truly builds on that formula to present something that manages to be something truly special in its own right.

Released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, Lil’ Guardsman puts players in the role of Lil, a twelve year-old girl who has found herself unwillingly thrust into the role of city guard for her kingdom’s capitol city, The Sprawl, in an anachronistic but mostly medieval fantasy setting. And while the framework is very clearly derived from Papers, Lil’ Guardsman lets up a bit on the tense and serious tone and gives players a bit of breathing room, as well as an interesting story and great characters to enjoy.

Make no mistake, there are still ethical choices to be made here. For one thing, it becomes clear pretty early on that your kingdom is practicing some despicable fantastical racism against the kingdom’s goblin citizenry, and you’ll have to decide whether to honor those unfair laws or break them and get marked down for doing so. However, at the same time, the game has an overall whimsical tone and a great sense of humor that takes the bite out of these ethical choices. Most notably, the fact that you’re a 12 year-old girl thrust into this position against her will makes it hard to feel too responsible for repercussions that arise from your actions – it’s pretty irresponsible, lazy, or just plain stupid for the people in charge to constantly put the safety of their citizenry in the hands of a small child.

It also helps the overall whimsical tone of this game that the writing is extremely sharp and clever, and the characters are extremely lovable. Lil herself has a mostly relaxed and sarcastic attitude, while the odd characters that greet her at the gate range wildly – at one point, you’ll be greeting a group of mourners returning from a funeral for a wealthy woman’s cat, the next you’ll be distracting a vampire with a bag full of rice you were given by a pixelated goblin farmer you met earlier who seemed plucked straight out of a Stardew Valley-style game. These characters are all bursting with personality, and react differently based on how you choose to interact with them.

Speaking of interacting, players have a number of different ways to interact with those seeking entry, to determine whether or not they’re safe to let in. You can simply speak with them, choosing whether or not to respond to their words with trust or skepticism. You can use one of multiple tools including a metal detector, an X-Ray, and a truth serum spray. Or you can use items from your inventory, confiscated from earlier encounters.

Unlike Papers, Please, which used a timer as a limiting factor, here players are limited in the number of actions they can take, and limited by the number of magical charges your tools have. Generally speaking, you can usually only take three actions per visitor, and must be shrewd about what to do and how much of your limited uses of magical items to spend on a particular visitor. Sure, this visitor that is obviously two goblins in a trench coat could be revealed if you use an X-Ray, but is that even really necessary? Furthermore, in some situations you may not want to use up all of your actions, such as when a VIP insists on being let through immediately – if there’s nothing suspicious about them, keeping them any longer might cause a diplomatic incident.

Further making matters more interesting is that the directives you’re given come from not one but three royal advisers, and they are at times contradictory. The career soldier is firmly about keeping order at any cost and strict adherence to the law, the snooty noble is about keeping the upper class treated with respect and keeping the lower class in its place, and the court jester is seemingly just aiming for laughs, sometimes by messing with the other two. In addition to following their commands as best you can, you’ll also want to be mindful of which of the trio you’re pleasing and which you’re angering through your choices.

If this was all the game was, it would be quite enough, but Lil’ Guardsman frequently shakes things up, changing around elements to reflect the evolving story, or suddenly going off on a tangent and doing something completely unexpected and out of the blue. I won’t spoil this here, but just suffice it to say that this is a game that is constantly surprising players and finding ways to shake up the status quo.

While much of this game’s charm is due to its excellent writing, at least some of it comes from its wonderful cartoony 2D art style, and full voice acting for its dialogue, with some particularly good voice acting for Lil herself. This is all backed by a fairly relaxed synthesized soundtrack with some nice chill tunes, like First Guardshift, Third Guardshift, Lieutenant Stryker’s Theme, Dr. Bea’s Digsite Theme, The Tavern, I Miss My Dad, and By the Water.

When it comes to complaints, I do have a few, though they’re a bit nitpicky. It’s not always clear what you need to do to get the best results when deciding how to deal with a visitor, and while you do get a machine to rewind time and try again, it has limited uses so you’ll likely be hesitant to use it just to improve your grade, unless you absolutely need to in order to move on. What’s more, if getting the best grade requires an object you needed to get earlier, or for you to power-up a tool that you don’t currently have readied, you’ll be locked out of that option. Also, between your times at the guard booth, you’ll find yourself walking around The Sprawl a lot, and your movement speed is slow enough to really make this tedious.

However, overall I thoroughly enjoyed Lil’ Guardsman. The characters are endearing, the story was engrossing enough that I had trouble tearing myself away from it, and the humor was good enough that it had me repeatedly laughing as I played it, and the game does a good job of giving players enough options for how to respond to visitors to your gate that you’ll have to give some thought about how to proceed, and you’ll also get enough twists and turns to add some wonderful variety to the gameplay. If the idea of a Graphic Adventure where you need to judge visitors at a guard’s gate seems interesting to you, but you perhaps don’t want something as somber and at times outright depressing like Papers, Please, Lil’ Guardsman is an excellent game in the same vein that’s absolutely worth playing.

tl;dr – Lil’ Guardsman is a Graphic Adventure that puts players in the role of a 12 year-old girl made to take a role as a gate guard, deciding whether or not to allow in various silly and bizarre characters. This game’s excellent writing, wonderful characters, engrossing story, and great sense of humor are all fantastic, and the gameplay gives players decent puzzles to solve while frequently changing things up to add variety. There are a few issues here, but overall this is an absolute delight of a game that plays like Papers, Please with a much more jovial tone.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel, Funniest Game, Most Efficient Use of File Storage Space, Best Story, Best New Character – Lil’

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