The Little Four

Slice-of-life is one of my favourite subgenres of fanfiction. Especially for those canons that tend toward intrigue and action, it is nice to read slower paced stories that give the characters time to rest and breathe, exploring personal lives and relationships: the quiet intimacy of late-night conversations, sharing dreams for the future, talking about what matters to them. It is often fascinating to compare interpretations of what they are like in more mundane, domestic sitatuations, small personal details that round out a character and in turn make me appreciate the source material more. All that is to say that I was very much looking forward to this slice-of-life featuring Poirot and Hastings, and it lived up to all my expectations.

The premise of this story is that Captain Hastings, following the death of his wife Dulcie, has returned to London with his four young children and taken up residence in the same apartment building as Poirot. Despite being a longtime Christie fan I’m unfamiliar with the two books most relevant to this game. It’s been ten years since I’ve read The Big Four, from which this game takes its name, and I don’t remember much of it, but I feel the author does a good job at giving enough context to understand both the character dynamics at play and the significance of The Big Four to this story. I haven’t read Curtain, the final Poirot novel, which I believe details the circumstances of Dulcie’s death and the lives of their children. I do know that in canon Dulcie passes away after her children are grown; I was initially wary that this game kills her off early so that Hastings and the young children can spent more time with Poirot; however the result is so charming that I can’t bring myself to mind much.

There is a small mystery here, but it is not the focus and is probably the weakest part. I enjoyed it, but it only took up about 15 minutes of my total 100 minutes of play time. The heart of the experience is exploring the two apartments, one occupied by Poirot and Hastings and the other by the children (if this was a graphical game it’d be called a walking simulator).

There’s a lot of characterisation to be gleaned from a person’s home, their bedroom, their study – how they’re decorated and organised, the objects they choose to display. The gameplay is walking through the house examining their rooms and belongings, with Hastings describing and explaining the background and telling anecdotes, giving a lovely look into their daily lives as a family. I smiled at small character details, Poirot having Hastings’ books in his study organised by height, Hastings’ wariness of modern-style furnishings, their considerations for buying a car. I especially loved the explorations of their relationship with the children; it’s nice to read how involved Poirot is with their lives and upbringing. Poirot making dinner and introducing Belgian dishes to the children! Grace making a little stuffed cat with a moustache as a gift!

In general the author did an excellent job at capturing the voice and essence of Poirot and Hastings, exploring aspects of their characters that Christie never focused on yet feel entirely natural and in keeping with canon. The last scene, of the two of them sitting and talking after putting the children to bed, was everything I could have hoped for.

This is a limited parser game, with little to do other than walking around examining things. Most verbs are disabled, the player dissuaded with a variety of in-character custom responses; even an accidental empty command becomes “I was momentarily dumbstruck.” I do wish that some more actions were accounted for – for example, trying to open the refrigerator gives “It wasn’t something I could open” (I’m exploring someone’s home, of course I want to snoop on what’s in their fridge!). However, the overall attention to detail is evident, making for a cohesive and immersive experience.

I also appreciate the small touches, such as the most important nouns in descriptions being bolded (though many non-bolded words can also be examined), which turn into italics after examination to help keep track of what you’ve seen. The descriptions are responsive to the things you’ve seen or done.

Only small complaint is with the status line. It is quite useful to list the exits and current objective, but it is all on one line and to accomodate the entire length requires setting the text width to far wider than is my preference. If the objective is too long it overlaps the exits. For example the status late-game in the dining room reads, on my preferred layout settings: DininCurrent objective: check on the children and head bExits: N Erot’s

I’ve also notices some inconsistences in how paragraphs are formatted, sometimes indented and sometimes not. The game has been updates several times since I downloaded it though so perhaps that has been touched up.

(note: these issues have been fixed in the time I first wrote this)

This is definitely among my favourites of the competition so far, and I fully intend to revisit it in the future.

A confession: I’ve only ever read one Agatha Christie novel, and it’s the Poirot-less And Then There Were None, so I went into this game with absolutely zero knowledge of the characters or their circumstances. But fortunately, that didn’t matter. There was enough context provided that I could easily pick up the backstory, and I was charmed right away by both the writing and the setup--a bachelor and a widower sharing a flat and co-raising the latter’s children together. The homoerotic potential of this arrangement is high, and the game doesn’t disappoint there; I loved the results of repeatedly examining Poirot and the response to telling the PC to kiss him.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the biggest hiccup I encountered was the mystery bit; I spent a fair bit of time re-examining everything I’d already looked at, which was kind of tedious, and when it came time to make an accusation, the game’s multiple layers of “Are you sure?” made me chicken out the first time--but at that point the game wouldn’t let me reload a save, so I had to quit and restart. But that was the only rough spot I encountered; overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.

This game draws on Agatha Christie’s books, with the main NPC being the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the PC being his good friend Captain Hastings. This is set later than most of the books, and Captain Hastings is now a widower with four children.

Unlike Christie’s usual fare of murder and intrigue, this is a light and pleasant game, more like a walking simulator or coffee shop AU. At all times your next task listed at the top of the screen, only one of which requires any sort of big difficulty. The rest of the game is just ‘chill vibes’, checking out the world, etc.

It’s effective at that. Bolded words draw attention to items of interest. You can talk to each character. I only wished that either the TALK response was more drawn out, or that we could ASK people about each other (of course that would take a lot of writing, so it might not be feasible. A menu conversation could have been fun, too).

The final part of the game involves a mystery, which I found to be a little unfair, but the MC had the exact same issues with it that I did and expressed them, which I found funny.

I’ve read most of the Poirot books (maybe all?) and this was a pleasant place to reminisce about it. I don’t know how someone knew to the characters would react, but I expect they’d find it pleasant as well.