Lil’ Guardsman puts the players in the shoes of Lil, short for Lilith, who is taking on her father’s duties as the guardsman. Inspired by Papers, Please, Hilltop Studios’ most recent game brings life to the genre with its humor and over 100 unique NPCs. To understand how the developers drew their inspiration and what aspects make Lil’ Guardsman unique in its own right, we spoke with the Co-Founders of Hilltop Studios, Scott Christian and Artiom Komarov, over an email interview.
Artiom Komarov: My name is Artiom, and I’m one of the Co-Founders of Hilltop Studios and Co-Creators of Lil’ Guardsman with Scott. We came up with the concept together, and I was responsible for game design and leading the art team on the game.
Scott Christian: I’m the other half of Hilltop Studios and Co-Creator of Lil’ Guardsman. I shared game design duties with Artiom, and I led the writing team and composed the music.
Artiom: I hope our game demonstrates that there’s room for an interesting variation on the ‘gate-guard/bureaucracy sim’ sub-sub-genre. Papers, Please was part of the design equation for Lil’ Guardsman from day 1, but we basically treated it as a jump-off point. I know people who imagine that our game is a re-skinned fantasy/comedy Papers, Please will be surprised.
Scott: We wanted to capture the tone and charm of the ’90s LucasArts adventure games both Artiom and I grew up loving. We didn’t want to do a straight-up ‘point and click’ adventure like those titles, but we wanted to replicate the feeling they gave us. I think on the surface our game is cute/cozy/funny, but I also love how many different directions it goes in. For instance, in the second half the kingdom is at war (thanks to your actions!), and the game deals with more grim and mature themes. It’s a great progression. Some of our favorite levels are the ‘night shifts’ where we riff on spooky horror tropes, though still through a comedy lens.
Artiom: Lil’ Guardsman was our first full-fledged game. I think the biggest challenge was that we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We were lucky to build a team of folks who had a lot of game development experience. A challenge that everyone who’s ever made anything creative, not just games, can probably empathize with is managing scope. In the creation phase, we had so much fun coming up with characters, story beats, and game mechanic ideas. But at a certain point in production, you have to ‘kill your darlings’ and be really merciless about what’s important vs. what needs to be cut in order to stay on track. We kept the nearly 100 characters we wanted to include in the game but cut a lot of other things to balance it out. Everything cut that we like is right there for the next one!
Artiom: A line I used with the team that we’ll carry forward into our future games is “how do we make failing fun?”.
Scott: We knew we wanted the game to have real dramatic stakes and to be challenging… tension and challenges are what keep a lot of people playing – wanting to succeed! But at the same time, we wanted Lil’ Guardsman to be accessible and a joy for people who play games to experience a great story. We spent a lot of time testing mechanics that made it both harder and easier, and we’re proud of the balance we struck in the final version.
Scott: You can’t go two minutes in the game without hitting a literary, video game or pop culture reference. Our rule in creating the game was that the player shouldn’t have to know a reference for it to make sense. We were lucky that the team was made up of folks from a few different countries, and for a number of them, English wasn’t their first language. This was a gift because we could try out jokes and scenes and get immediate feedback if they laughed or looked at us confused! A specific reference-y bit I love is the NPC Stabitha Grieves, who shows up on the level 10 night shift. She’s such a beautiful amalgamation of half a dozen ’80s slasher horror tropes.
Artiom: That’s a question for our publisher, but of course, we’d be thrilled to be on Game Pass! We also really like what Netflix is doing with storytelling games.
Artiom: We started in March of 2022, so development took about 18 months. Our core team was seven people, not including the 13 voice actors whose voices bring the characters to life. Other folks who touched the project were our publisher Versus Evil, the Red Cerberus QA Team, the Gamecoder Studios Porting Team, and the Localization Team at GameScribes. So – 7 people, but also a ton of people!
Scott: We never diverged from the comedic/fantasy setting of the first game, but we’ve joked about DLC being the mechanic in other weird settings: Lil in Space! Lil Under the Sea! You get the idea.
Artiom: LG feels both similar and different from the prototype we made when we first pitched the game. Interrogating NPCs and using the zany tools were there from the beginning, but so much of what makes the game fun and magical are things we discovered through production and through collaboration with the team. Exploring the city outside of the guard shed was an early addition that wasn’t in the prototype that balances the shed gameplay nicely.
Scott: Every wishlist, review, and shout-out on socials is SO VALUABLE for a small indie game like ours.
Artiom: Thanks to everyone who has fallen in love with Lil!
Lil’ Guardsman is a puzzle video game inspired by the likes of Papers, Please. The game was developed by Hilltop Studios and published by Versus Evil. It was released on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on January 23, 2024.
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I’m an avid gamer turned content writer, my hobbies include but are not limited to different forms of content creation. Not a complicated person, I play games and write about them. Currently attending university for Data Sciences. My favorite past-time is trying to different challange runs of Soulsborne and Souls-like games in the goofiest way possible for my own amusement. You can check my Gaming Profile on Steam And Xbox!
