The Little Match Girl 4: Crown of Pearls

I’ve seen a few people saying they felt out of the loop with this game since they didn’t play the earlier little match girl games. I can say (having played the first 3 but not the offshoots) that the only thing important from the first games is in the recap. This game does continuity kind of like early Adventure Time, with mostly ‘adventure of the week’ stuff with occasional throwbacks.

The game features some beautiful styling, with nice location descriptions, music, and scrolling text. I missed some of the intro timed text since my son asked me for help with something; timed text isn’t so much of a pet peeve as it is something that just doesn’t fit into my play style of fitting in games around the corners of my life. Fortunately the ending could be scrolled back if missed!

Apparently this game has a ton in common with Metroid Prime. I’ve never played that game, but I looked it up and there are quite a few similarities, even some cameos, if you can call it that.

The overall structure, like most of the Matchgirl games, is that looking into any source of fire (outside of the nighttime stars) will teleport the player to one of five or so worlds. There’s some nice variety here, including space, dinosaurs, wild west, etc. The Pirates of Penzance had a strong presence.

Each area has some kind of powerup that helps you explore other areas. In the meantime, there are different diversions (such as helping a goldfish or doing a time typing game).

I found the structure and side quests engaging and fun. The writing was flawless for me and had its moments of gravitas. I observed how it was done with interest, as my current WIP is structure much like this one, with different worlds or dimensions leading to some emotional moments. I liked how it worked here, so it gave me more confidence.

I did get stuck once. I suspected I had missed some exit. I used location based hints and quickly realized I hadn’t noticed an exit, and then solved the game soon after that.

I can see the weight of a long series making it hard for people to get invested in playing a game, but this one as a standalone might as well be the introduction to the series, as continuity isn’t really a major feature of the games. They can be played in just about any order.

It’s nice to see high quality in the comp. Between Ryan Veeder, JJ Guest, BJ Best, we have three former winners entering well-done games, as well as newcomers producing polished games of great value.