The Little Match Girl 5: The Hunter's Vow

"The Little Match Girl 5: The Hunter's Vow" is the tenth game about the titular Match Girl overall. Being familiar with the previous nine, I correctly expected it to be smooth, pleasant, gripping, and take me to some more interesting times and places.

What I didn't expect is to be genuinely surprised. Come on: it's the tenth game on the same subject.

It surprised me. Then again. And again.

P. S. "Goroshinka" means "Little Pea" in Russian. That's another Andersen reference.

Each main installment of the Little Match Girl series has introduced some new and interesting mechanic, and this installment's is (Spoiler - click to show)Linus's skeleton key for Part 1, and (Spoiler - click to show)controlling the five Ebenezabeths for Part 2. The former is a novel approach to this series's core concept, but the latter is unlike anything I've seen in IF games before.

The narrative of Hunter's Vow has also improved upon it predecessors, giving players a protagonist other than Ebenezabeth, showing (Spoiler - click to show)Ebenezabeth at various points in her life, and several fun characters from and references to previous games in the series.

Fun game, definitely worth playing!

Little Match Girls, assemble! This episode immediately subverts the LMG formula by putting you in the shoes of Linus, an NPC from previous games, who can jump between worlds by locking/unlocking doors. He's hunting five different versions of Ebenezabeth, to bring them together for a daring rescue mission foreshadowed in LMG4. The second part of the game gives you control over all five match girls, jumping between them at will, as they infiltrate a vampire's lair and use their unique skills in conjunction to save the day.

Big maps, lots of NPCs, action sequences, character switching, cut scenes, all contribute to the cinematic feeling of of Little Match Girl 5, but it's the story where this episode really excels: giving glimpses of vast world-building, then pulling back and making it all about Ebenezabeth and her immediate circle of friends and enemies, a story about people instead of just places or ideas. This trick is repeated multiple times, and culminates in possibly the biggest thing to happen to Ebenezabeth in the series so far.