Lil' Guardsman

Lil' Guardsman is a puzzle adventure where you play a 12-year-old covering her dad's shift at the guardhouse. Play involves questioning each person who wants to pass to determine who to admit or deny. It combines Papers Please border-control decisions with competing interests in an unfolding fantasy story.

CONTENT RATING

Bad Language,

Sex

PLATFORMS

PlayStation 5

PC

PlayStation 4

Xbox One

Xbox Series X|S

Nintendo Switch

Mac

POSITIVE GAMEPLAY

Empathy

Interpretation

Leadership

Problem Solving

Puzzle Solving

Social Deduction

Storytime

Decision Making

PLAY STYLE

Branching Conversations

You question the stream of different humans, elves, goblins and cyclopes to carefully decide who you should let in. To do this you use a range of tools to inform your choices. Your cypher helps translate foreign languages to spot suspicious documents. Your X-ray gun lets you look into bags. Or there's a truth serum you can use. Often, the best tool is simply asking why they need to get in.

Each choice is important as it affects the story and you only get three actions to uncover nefarious actors. Depending on how you do you get rated and rewarded with money accordingly. You then shift back into point-and-click exploration of the city which helps frame your decisions on the next shift.

The result is a game about trust and evidence. Do you trust yourself, your various advisors with their own aspirations or the apparently innocent people trying to access the castle?

GAMEPLAY TRAILER

Good to know

Insights to ensure your child's gaming experience remains safe and enjoyable

Build critical thinking

Puzzle games can help children develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Ask them about the choices they make to further develop these skills.

Improve core skills

For young children, some puzzle games can support pattern recognition and spatial awareness. Encourage a range of different puzzle games to support the development of these skills.

Learning benefits

Attention to detail is often important for these types of video games. Encourage children to slow down and think outside the box to complete challenges.

Skill level

Suggested by Family Gaming Database

You need to have good skills of observation and be able to make connections between what you've learned and the decisions you must make.

Content rating

Rated PEGI 12 for Mild Swearing and Sexual Innuendo. This game features use of bad language including ‘b*!%$@d’, ‘b*!%$y’ and ‘p@*!%d’. The game also contains sexual innuendo, for example the line, "Although I have never known the caress of a lover, the thought of it fills my loins to bursting”. Each day, after their gatekeeping shift, the player is able to explore the town and often frequents a tavern. Alcohol is pictured in bottles on shelves and in glasses on the bar, but the player is never able to interact with alcohol. The game also features non-realistic violence towards both human and fantasy characters, which does not result in any obvious injury or harm. The player has the option to use a whip in order to get information out of characters. There is very little animation in these scenes, with static images simply flashing and growing in size for a brief second before returning to normal. There are no realistic reactions or responses from characters when this happens, nor is there any injury detail. There is also some implied violence, for example when characters are heard screaming and shouting when a building catches fire, although no harm to them is shown. Throughout the game, the player often encounters characters who are trying to smuggle drugs into the town. The two drugs are given fantasy names: 'Pixie Dust' and 'Peaceblossom'. Characters who are supposed to have been consuming drugs have red eyes. There are also references to gambling, with the player able to bet on which team they think will win in a game of the fictional game, 'Goblin Ball', receiving gold as a reward if they win.

PEGI rating explained?