Lil' Guardsman is a charming but flawed take on Papers, Please
Lil' Guardsman's core mechanic has the player working a mundane job at a checkpoint, deciding which people to let through and which people to deny. If that sounds familiar, it might be because the game is inspired by acclaimed game Papers, Please from 2013.
However, instead of putting you in the shoes of an immigrations officer against a politically tense backdrop, Hilltop Studios' take is more light-hearted, following 12-year-old Lil, who substitutes for her father as a guardsman.
Over a dozen days, Lil is confronted by numerous characters wanting to enter the kingdom of the Sprawl. She has a number of tools at her disposal, too — such as an X-ray and metal detector to search for hidden items and a decoder ring to decrypt coded messages.
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Like its inspiration, Lil' Guardsman tries to emphasise that your actions will have an effect on the overarching story. But the way it communicates and goes about this is less than elegant.
After deciding what to do with a person, including potentially sending them to jail, you're given a star rating out of four. This rating indicates how 'well' you've done your job, but also makes the experience feel more restrictive.
Despite the emphasis on choice, the game discourages you from exploring other routes by heavily basing your star rating on your adherence to the day's rules.
At first, it might seem the score is tied to your bosses' perception of your performance (and there is a monetary reward attached to it), but the feedback you receive on the results screen isn't consistent with that, reading more like the game itself is the one passing judgment.
Mechanically, the gameplay loop is appealing, and taking the time to interrogate each character can be rewarding when you get to the bottom of their stories. You avoid making assumptions based on someone's appearance, and the game is pacey enough that it doesn't drag (except for one chapter involving a fetch quest).
However, the task of processing these characters is presented as little more than puzzles to 'solve', which is jarring considering it's a game that essentially revolves border control.
Though you're playing as a guardsman and not an immigrations officer, Lil still has the final say on who can enter and who cannot.
The game tries to give every character hoping for passage a personality, but they still end up being distilled to pretty much either a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
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Lil's portable time machine further adds to that jarring feeling. The device allows you to rewind to any point in the day, and while it carries some story relevance, as a gameplay feature it's almost essential to use if you want to find the 'right' solutions to attain four-star ratings.
The act of denying (or jailing) people is framed as being done for the good of the Sprawl, but this isn't explored much further.
It's clear that the game was designed to be a breezy experience — from the comedy writing (which can be entertaining) to its larger-than-life characters — but it's difficult to call this a "cosy" title.
It's not like the game never touches on the more serious side of events. Discrimination is depicted, and the Sprawl later has to repel an invasion and deal with concerns over a food shortage. The game doesn't go deep into the topics, but the main characters often show compassion during these moments.
What's certainly successful is how Lil' Guardsman portrays Lil's relationship with her father Hamish. It's one of the brightest parts of the game, with heartfelt moments between the pair as the stakes grow in the second half of the story and with a good pay-off at the end.
And despite how beloved Papers, Please was and still is, it's kind of surprising that there haven't been many games that have tried to put their own spin on the idea.
Lil' Guardsman is charming and novel enough that it's worth playing, but a flawed approach that skirts around aspects of the core idea holds the overall experience back.
Platform reviewed on: PC
Lil' Guardsman is out now on PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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