The Little Match Girl 4: Crown of Pearls
Thoughts
This was my first encounter with Ryan Veeder’s “Little Match Girl” series. It’s great! A time-hopping pulp adventure with vampires and space pirates and dinosaurs. This felt “oldschool” to me in a Lucasarts adventure sense - quite player-friendly and well-clued, but very little handholding, with lots of poking at the edges of the map for unsolved mysteries. Jumping into the middle of something like this is a little like my experience with Doctor Who, where I’m never going to go back and watch all of it, but the size of the back catalog can enrich the newer stuff. The game does a great job with the small reminders to bring me up to speed as needed.
I absolutely love the Saul Bass-esque visual design - it centers typography, with big bold titles on solid colors setting the scene for each era, and a large and readable handwriting font for the plot-important journal you find.
There’s a great interactive comedy beat where you are hiding in a closet and trying to assemble a disguise by rummaging through the junk. Fortunately it fools the not-too-bright Pirates of Penzance (no jokes about being born in a leap year, but that’s probably for the best). I also liked the sidequest where you’re getting animals to sign a petition making a future goldfish their representative.
When I got stuck and turned to the walkthrough, the clue I needed was that I could burn the wall of brambles in 67M BC. Other burnable objects had clues about bring dry or brittle, while the bramble bush was a sturdy living plant thriving in a lava-filled landscape; and rather than switch into “try everything” mode I felt okay pulling up the walkthrough so I could see more of the game in two hours. I’m glad I did! It’s a great player’s guide with background and maps and clues, rather than a list of required commands. I recommend reading it even if you didn’t need it.
Amazing work!