Review | Lil Guardsman

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris January 23, 2024Last Updated: January 23, 2024

1 708 4 minutes read

Lil Guardsman finds you in the role of Lil, a 12 year old who lives in The Sprawl. Lil’s dad works at a Guard’s Shack on the city walls and decides to leave Lil in charge so that he can go bet on Goblinball. Similar to Paper’s Please, with a dash of Monkey Island, Lil Guardsman is a smart, well-written, and excellent voice-acted game full of choice and consequence. The pacing can be off and gameplay mechanics tend to force you into hearing the same conversations repeatedly. Let’s dive in and see how the whole package comes together.

The Sprawl

The star of Lil Guardsman is The Sprawl and its inhabitants. A mix of light fantasy and occasionally modern technology, The Sprawl is a densely packed city full of humans, elves, goblins, and more. You are Lil, and it will be your job to chart the course of destiny for all of its inhabitants. At first, you’re just covering the guard shed for your dad, one of the city’s main entry points. Throughout twelve episodes multiple other scenarios will crop up, allowing you to see more of the city’s well-drawn sites.

Choice and consequence are the heart of the game. The main task you’ll have to face is whom to let in, reject, or imprison as they attempt to gain entry into the city. Even when your shift is over you’ll run into key figures of power within The Sprawl who, for some reason, will rely on your twelve-year-old’s wisdom to make life-altering decisions. A fun, silly premise is properly matched with a sharply written game full of clever jokes. Early on it didn’t land nearly as well for me, feeling a bit forced at times. By the third level, things had improved quite a bit as my decisions started to shape the game’s narrative. I got through everything twice, with wildly different results.

There are definitely some “set in stone” story choices, but I look forward to seeing just how much things can change as the public gets their hands on it. There is, quite early on, a time-rewinding mechanic that makes this game far easier than Paper’s Please. It can be a bit frustrating though as when you use it you’ll be seeing/hearing the same opening lines as you try to determine exactly which gameplay mechanic you need to use for the best score.

Gameplay

Most of Lil Guardsman takes place in your guard shack. At the start of each day, you’ll get the Royal Writ, which is a set of guidelines you’ll need to follow for that level. Alongside the Writ are several guard tools to use. These include Truth Spray, a Bull Whip, and more. All are powered by crystals, a finite resource that is key to managing each level as you attempt to get the best score possible. The scoring system is an up to 4-star system, with three stars being for completing the correct main action. Four stars require you to use the right tool at your disposal, whether it’s an x-ray machine or the telephone (future tech!) to call the correct advisory (of which there are three).

Outside of the guard shed you’ll have some 2.5D walking segments in various locales around The Sprawl. From gambling on Goblinball to selling confiscated items to a vendor that you may or may not have let in, there is a solid variety of things to do. It helps the pacing but doesn’t save it. At times I found the rank-and-file guard shack work far more interesting than having to walk around a small playspace and have to essentially point & click my way into solving an issue.

The time rewinding mechanic is a huge help as trying to get the best score/outcomes possible would be a massive pain without it. There is a level select, to let you jump in and out of sections but it felt more disjoined than playing straight through. Your choices have both a large and small impact on events as you will shape the overall narrative while getting quick/disconnected story beats at the end of each level.

Sites & Sounds

Lil Guardsman is a nice-looking title. I dig the art style and found it inoffensive for the most part. Where the game truly shines is in its audio. The music is catchy, though occasionally a bit too twee for my tastes. The voice cast did a killer job, with some actors covering multiple roles. They help elevate the excellent writing enough to make me forgive the number of times I had to hear the same conversation multiple times while going for high scores.

Comedy in video games can be difficult. Lil Guardsman walks the fine line between self-aware and irreverent. They’ll joke about tutorials while you’re in them and constantly point out how absurd the premise of twelve year old controlling the fate of a kingdom is. Everything is voice-acted, an impressive feat given how much variety there is to where the story goes. The only sections that aren’t are the post-level character/choice breakdowns. Let a vampire through, well it might not always go so bad! Let a cute young lady in? Surprise she’s a vicious serial killer!

It added a ton to the replayability for me, prompting a second playthrough immediately after I finished my first. Bug-wise I only ran into one major one, which was a game crash the first three times I tried to play. After a system restart everything worked fine though, so it may have been on my Series X’s end.