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It took five days to write this game.
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by David Welbourn

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The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen

by Ryan Veeder profile

Episode 1 of The Little Match Girl
2021

Web Site

(based on 19 ratings)
4 reviews

About the Story

A touching short story.


Game Details


News

A new version of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen is available at the author's website and on itch.io. It uses Vorple to match the visual style of later games in the Little Match Girl series.
Reported by Ryan Veeder | History | Edit | Delete
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Number of Reviews: 4
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Most Helpful Member Reviews


5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Quest through time and space, with a Hans Christian Andersen setting, February 6, 2022
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

This game takes the classic, depressing/sacrifical tale of the little matchgirl and uses it as a setting for a larger story.

In the original story, each match a girl lit gave her another vision of brighter things. In this game, each match is used to teleport to the user to...whatever location Ryan was interested in talking about that day?

The overall puzzle structure is fairly lenient; it is generally a fetch quest, and each task can almost always be solved by brute force, but has internal logic.

+Polish: The game is smooth. I had a couple of issues with synonyms here and there (literally can't remember what, but it was me typing dumb stuff), but the vast majority of possible actions I tried worked great.
+Descriptiveness: Very clear and easily envisioned settings and characters.
+Interactivity: The quest structure is simple, but I felt allowed to go off the rails at times.
+Emotional impact: It didn't have quite the gut punch of the original, but was more fun.
+Would I play again? Sure!

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A short time-travel story, January 4, 2022

By means of the matches, you'll travel through time and space to various places, meet a handful of charming NPCs, and solve a dozen inventory puzzles. Keep notes and you'll probably solve it in under an hour.

Veeder's NPCs are always reliably charming, and this game is no exception.

As I write this, the game identifies itself as "Episode 1" of a series. Thus far, it's a fine short piece; I'm curious to see how it expands in subsequent episodes.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Light the fire up in the night, March 30, 2023
by Lance Cirone (Backwater, Vermont)

If there's one series that's interested me lately, it's Ryan Veeder's Little Match Girl games. I hear about the thing so much, and the increasingly crazy ways it develops and new games get revealed. So I took the time to check it out for myself.

I had been completely unfamiliar with the story, so I took a bit to do extra research before playing the game. Here, you're an unnamed little girl who's freezing to death at a street corner. You can light four matches to see different visions, each with new places to go and people to meet.

The writing is descriptive while using few words, and it made the text engaging to read. All the characters you meet have unique personalities and backstories. My favorites were Poseidon's two daughters, who are glad to accept you as their own sister.

The gameplay is a simple puzzle chain of finding an item in one area, giving it to someone, then using that somewhere else. Still, there's easy-to-follow logic with each. I always had an idea of what to do next, but it never felt boring or overly easy.

It's a charming story that doesn't take too long and is worth your time. I'm excited to see what the next games are like.

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The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen on IFDB

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New walkthroughs for January 2024 by David Welbourn
On Tuesday, January 30, 2024, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works...




This is version 7 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 31 January 2024 at 3:37am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page