Lil’ Guardsman

Lil' Guardsman is a humorous point-and-click adventure about a twelve-year-old temporary guard. Lil stands in for her father at the city gate of the fantasy metropolis Sprawl and decides which visitors may enter, are turned away or are detained.

You question people, elves, goblins and other beings, look for contradictions and solve puzzles. Small decisions at the gate develop into a story with political alliances and possible dangers for the city.

Lil' Guardsman was released on Jan 23, 2024 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. The PC version supports Windows and macOS.

Hilltop Studios developed the game. Versus Evil originally published it, and tinyBuild is also listed as publisher. The PlayStation and Xbox versions each have designated native platform variants.

The adventure is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. Windows and Mac players can find the PC version on Steam. The console versions are distributed through the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store and Nintendo eShop.

There are supported versions for PS4 and PS5, covering both console generations. The Xbox Store also lists Xbox One and the version optimised for Xbox Series X|S. A dedicated Switch 2 version is not confirmed.

New visitors stand in front of Lil's guard booth every workday. You listen to their stories, ask questions and use tools before you pass judgement. Correct answers bring better ratings and additional options for later cases.

The game does not demand quick reflexes. What matters is observation, conclusions and willingness to engage with strange fantasy characters. The hand-drawn adventure combines puzzles with extensive dialogue.

The soundtrack is available as a standalone music release. It adds the game's music, but no additional interrogation cases or playable chapters.

The Timeflux Edition offered on Steam bundles the main game with the soundtrack. The standard version contains the full adventure without this music pack.

The Windows version requires at least Windows 10 (64-bit), 8 GB RAM and 4 GB free storage. It also needs a quad-core processor at 3.0 GHz, a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon RX 460, and DirectX 11.

Recommended: 16 GB RAM, a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or Radeon RX Vega 64, and DirectX 12. On Mac, the minimum configuration according to Steam runs from macOS 10.15 with an Intel Core i5 quad-core processor and 8 GB RAM.

Lil's judgements affect the fate of Sprawl. Behind everyday entry decisions, conflicts arise between hostile kingdoms, whose alliances are even negotiated through a royal wedding.

Some visitors bring only small personal problems to Lil, while others are part of bigger schemes. The story reacts to whom you let through, whom you don't believe and whom you hold against their will.

Over 100 fully voiced characters come to Lil at the city gate. Their answers, interests and quirks form the basis for interrogations of varying difficulty.

Elves, cyclopes, goblins and ordinary citizens can't all be handled with a single routine. Good decisions come from comparing statements and using the right tool at the right time.

Lil can expand her equipment with earned gold. New tools open up additional ways to see through visitors' intentions and assess their statements.

The tools need to be used deliberately: not every unusual appearance is suspicious, and a hasty decision can have serious consequences for the visitor or the city.

The Chronometer3000 turns back time and allows a different decision. This lets you revisit earlier interrogations, try additional lines of questioning and reach a better outcome.

The time machine is also part of the humorous story. Repeated decisions are not just a restart of the same scene, but give you the chance to see the characters' different reactions.

The entry verdicts affect later events in Sprawl. The sum of your decisions leads to different reactions and possible endings, rather than every character disappearing from the story after the interrogation.

The mix of detective work and branching story makes a second playthrough interesting too: with different answers and tools, you can try out possibilities you missed before.

Lil’ Guardsman is designed for one player. You guide Lil alone through the interrogations and the story. The PC version is listed as a single-player adventure, and the PlayStation Store lists one player.

Because the story is based on conversation choices and puzzles, no shared online match is needed. The official product pages do not announce a separate co-op mode.

The characters and the city are designed in a colorful, hand-drawn cartoon style. Exaggerated facial expressions and dialogue underline the adventure's humor.

The more than 100 voiced visitors give the cases distinct personalities. Despite the fairy-tale facade, the story often revolves around mistrust, political interests and the consequences of authority decisions.

Lil’ Guardsman supports German on-screen text. The PlayStation version lists English voice-over and subtitles or on-screen languages in German, English, Simplified Chinese and Latin American Spanish.

The PC version also offers these languages on Steam. On-screen languages for the console versions may vary by store region.

Hilltop Studios developed Lil’ Guardsman as a standalone fantasy puzzle adventure. It was released with Versus Evil and tinyBuild respectively.

The mix of gate guarding, interrogations and time travel is at the heart of the game. Extra content such as the separately sold soundtrack does not change the single-player story.

The story unfolds through dialogue, puzzles and menu choices. On PC, the point-and-click adventure can be played with a mouse; Steam also lists full controller support.

The German translation lets you read the dialogue without knowing English. On the PlayStation Store, English voices and German on-screen text are listed separately.