Ratings and Reviews by jakomo

Scientists have proven that by the year 2033, all interactive fiction will be Little Match Girl games. The eighth episode to date has Match Girl taking on a whole gang of bad guys, the "naughty girls" - some of whom are real historical figures. Takes place after LMG4, but mainly refers to events from LMG3. Gameplay revolves around finding and collecting "special verbs", then using them in the appropriate places to solve puzzles. Simple, straightforward, perfectly effective and highly entertaining as ever.

Almost like a "deleted scene" from LMG4, further expanding on the unexplained history between The Little Match Girl and the character "Linus", who was apologetic about a mystery event in the past. This episode fills in part of that continuity gap as LMG leaps between her attic and four locations (a cabin in the woods, a witch's cave, a future crypt-temple, and a metropolis in the grip of panic) in search of a leaf that can be used to create a curative elixir. She's accompanied by her crow, who becomes the playable character at one point. A welcome twist to the now tried & tested formula of this series. Ends with a straight-up general knowledge test question (easily cheatable).

The fourth numbered entry, and the sixth overall entry, in the distinguished series about the eponymous time-and-space-hopping assassin, formerly a tragic Hans Christian Andersen heroine. LMG4 drops the turn-based combat of its predecessor and returns to traditional puzzle-solving roots, while keeping the large, sprawling maps that need to be explored with pen-and-paper in hand (including prehistoric Montana, a far-future colony ship, an alpen castle and a frontier mining town).

No opening "mission briefing" this time round: you're dropped on a beach in Penzance with a picture of a lighthouse and told to get on with it. The game meanders at first before coalescing into a collect-the-pieces plot (pearls for the fairy prince's crown) but it's easy enough to grok that you need to explore every location you can: unlock doors, find light sources, shoot bad guys etc. There's plenty of optional content: I mistakenly thought a side quest about gathering signatures for a petition was actually the main objective, so was surprised when the quest-giver just gave a curt "ok thanks" type response and nothing else happened.

As expected of this series: great writing and well-balanced old-school gameplay (I only used the built-in hints once). But it's also the first entry that doesn't quite feel complete (there's a lot of setup for LMG5 that doesn't pay off in this entry) and the first entry where I felt it was content to rest on its laurels: there's no really innovative new stuff here that hasn't been seen previously. But the series already sets a very high quality bar, so it remains must-play stuff even while coasting.

Experimental text adventure in the mould of Heavy Metal magazine's hard-edged sci-fi stories. Crashed spaceships, alien planets, biomechanoids and plasma rifles all figure. You play using just single verbs, but many of those verbs are not available until you have the necessary object to activate them. Compass directions are replaced with WALK and JUMP and further commands as you progress. Makes it pretty difficult to map! But the game is small enough that it doesn't matter. Finding new locations often entails returning to previous locations to try out new verbs you've acquired since your last visit, Metroidvania-style. Although small, there is a ton of optional content to discover. I barely scratched the surface, finishing with a meager 'C' rating. HINT commands are included, which you'll most likely need when replaying to find all that content.

Each Little Match Girl game has been getting more and more elaborate, so inevitably The Little Match Girl 3 is a giant, open-world non-linear RPG. Yes, RPG: your character has stats, can recruit party members and battles enemies in turn-based combat. Pretty daunting at first: you'll need to map, keep notes, it's tricky to win battles and potential companions seem very scarce. Luckily there are no negative results to losing a battle, it's easy to restore your HP and ammo, and once you get into the groove of picking the right fight, using a winning strategy, then levelling up to do it all over again, it settles into a nice flow. Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom vibes. There are a few traditional fetch-quest type puzzles too to break things up, but the main focus is on the combat, which has a lot of depth: my strategy involved using (Spoiler - click to show)the crow's "vex" and "shriek" to disable enemies, the match girl's "rapidfire" to do massive damage, and the mermaid's "heal" and "vortex" situationally. But there were lots of special abilties, stat-enhancing items and magic potions I never touched. There was even a whole other companion I never recruited. Every player will have their own unique way to win.

Light and fluffy when it wants to be, dark and moody when it needs to be, Veeder has an affinity for the JRPG Earthbound and, of all his work, this is the game that shows that influence the clearest.

A traditional sequel in the Hollywood style: everything people liked about the original but more and bigger. Locations are more expansive, puzzles are more complex (there's even a full-blown escape room in here), NPCs generally have more to say. As a result it does lose some of the elegance and simplicity that gave the original its charm. But it gains some great gags: the sea-captain's diary is an entertainingly absurd piece of Spike Milligan-esque nonsense-humour. The sudden appearance (and subsequent complete disappearance) of RPG combat is also worth a chuckle (but will turn out to be a major gameplay element of the next game). A nice wrinkle is that a lot of the puzzles are about creating the fire-source that you need to proceed. Straight-up (Spoiler - click to show)killing a guy may seem a bit out-of-character for the protagonist, but actually fits with the (Spoiler - click to show)implied violence of the first game's ending. As well as being a neat metaphor for letting go of the past and looking forward instead of clinging on to a mythical "golden age".