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.