The life of a guardsperson is not one filled with adventures and heroics. You’ll spend days outside, which might be lovely during the summer, but miserable when it’s cold and wet. You’ll also get to meet plenty of interesting people, but you’ll be scrutinising what they say and carry to decide if they should be let into town, often with complex and far-reaching consequences if you get it wrong.
Now imagine all of that decision-making power is put on the shoulders of a twelve-year-old girl. That’s the situation in the fantasy land of the Sprawl, where Lil minds the guard post for her father, who would rather be at the pub betting on goblinball than actually doing his job.
Taking inspiration from Papers, Please and Monkey Island, Lil Guardsman mixes what is essentially border control management with comedy and a dash of time travel. Across the eleven levels, Lil has to decide who to let into the City, who to deny, and who to send straight to jail. To help with this, she has access to a decoder ring, an X-ray machine, a metal detector, truth spray, and a bullwhip. She cannot use them in an unlimited fashion, though. Each item is powered by a power crystal, but each crystal only has a single use, has to be bought, and you can only slot up to five crystals per item. Lil also has a time travel device, and can travel back in time to change her choices. But, using the device too much can in itself have unintended consequences.
Lil’s actions are also limited per person that she meets, with the majority having three actions that can be done to them before a decision is made. Lil can talk to the person, use one of her items to scan for contraband or learn the person’s true intentions, or call one of the royal advisors for advice. These advisors are Ashe, a socialite who rose up from the streets, Stryker, the military strategist of the realm, and Malcolm, the court jester. Each of them has their own agenda too. At the beginning of most shifts, Lil will also receive a writ of instructions to follow, but you do not have to follow them and make your own decisions. You are given a star rating for each decision, with a final rating given at the end of each level. This rating determines how much gold Lil is paid. It also determines if Lil keeps her job or if it is game over.
The kind of people Lil will interact with range from a little old ladies to royalty, mages, and vampires. Deciding who gets entry will lead to consequences, up to and including royal marriages and war. Decisions can also create enemies for Lil, and she can be killed. There are a number of choices and this means that there are a number of different endings that can be unlocked, some good and some very bad. Lil is not restricted to her guardshed either. In each level, Lil can travel to different locations to speak to people, gain resources, and make further decisions. There are also mini games interspersed throughout, including a blind date-like spin off and battles.
Lil Guardsman is a fun game but it does have some continuity issues, and this could be down to the multiple timelines. For example, at the end of each level an outcome for the characters you spoke to are revealed. On at least two occasions, there was either reference to their death or them leaving a job, but those characters would turn up later where it did not make sense in the timeline. The writing overall is decent and funny at times, though the story, even with its timeline shenanigans, is predictable quite a lot of the time. The acting is also really good, with decent range especially for Lil. Lil Guardsman’s cartoon-like design fit the game perfectly too, and it is well drawn throughout.
