izigame.me

Lil guardsman is an overall excellent game, even if it's advertisements are a bit misleading.
Story: By far the best thing in the game is its story, with it's emotional core being the bond Lil shares with her dad. The game perfectly balances Lil being a 12 year old who is put in a very stressful situation without them coming across as annoying. I really liked how they SHOWED Lil missing her dad without ever having to directly state that. Not only that but the world building is solid with different factions and people having their own desires and goals and you navigating the conflicts of said desires and goals is a huge part of the game. Each main and supporting character feels fleshed out and by the end of the game you really do feel like you want to protect this town you've come to know and shape.
Gameplay; Okay so this is the misleading thing a lot of people get wrong. A lot of people call this a "Paper's Please" game but with fantasy elements and I think that's an inaccurate statement. To me a Paper's Please game is a test of your OCD; basically a test of your ability to notice small mistakes in a repetitive task while under pressure from a ticking clock.
Lil Guardsman is not this; Lil Guardsman is more like Monkey Island with a Papers Please setting. Yes you are working border security and checking people, but there's no time limit here and you also aren't given all of the information right away with every person having some kind of secret objective you need to perform to get a 4 star rating. While you can logically deduce some of the secret objectives based on visual clues and hints from your info board, the game does strongly encourage you to just click your tools and see what happens.
This doesn't make this a bad game, it's just not a Papers Please game if that's what you were hungry for.
I do also want to state that the first level in particular is terrible from a gameplay perspective (it's great from a story perspective). At no point does the tutorial tell you that there are MULTIPLE ways of getting a 4 star rating, as different tools and techniques can complete the secret objective. Players will probably figure this out at some point when they realize they can't complete a 4 star rating because they used all of the charges for the needed tool up earlier in the run.
But the game should really TELL the player this in the beginning as that majorly impacts decision making. Also it's a very strange choice that the player doesn't unlock the ability to go back in time and redo their decisions in the first level. Since that's when their most likely still experimenting and trying to figure out what each tool and option does. Granted the first level is pretty much on safety rails and won't stop you from getting a bad ending but its still surprising nevertheless and leaves a bad first impression.
Luckily the game does pick up from there and keeps going strong. Managing your tools and upgrades and money is pretty fun although you can become quickly broken by mid game. Hoarding items can be annoying at times since only a few are useless but since you don't know what will become useful later you end up keeping everything (especially since an item's use can be reveal hours after collecting the item). Not that money is a big issue in-game since most levels rarely need you to use a single tool more than once in a level. Still from a completionist standpoint it does feel weird to see so many items in my inventory collecting dust when I can sell them.
I only played through the game once and got the best ending, so I can't speak on the game's choice system although it did feel like my choices were influencing events in the game. Overall though I had a fun time and would recommend them game.