Little Misfortune – Fox Protector, Monster Child Abductor

Happiness to the blog! I spent last weekend playing another indie game in the backlog and I am torn whether to consider it an adventure or a horror game because it does have some scary elements to it.

Either way, it was an interesting game with beautiful graphics. That game is Little Misfortune.

Misfortune is a cute and innocent 8-year old girl who loves to colour, make crafts, especially with glitter, she has a vivid and rambunctious imagination and is eager to run away and live with the fox she sees out her window sometimes named Benjamin.

Although looking and sounding cute, as soon as I started this game, I knew there was more to it than meets the eye. Misfortune’s life is far from perfect as she lives with her abusive parents, however, nothing is mentioned that the abuse is towards her. She often says throughout the game that her language and other puns she makes are what she takes from her parents. Not only that, but she also has a lot of bad luck along the way.

The game’s narrator instructs Misfortune to find the prize of eternal happiness as part of his own game while also mentioning that she will die today. This is where I got suspicious, especially once he first told her to cross the road and then her surroundings temporarily changed showing a monster approaching. More on that later.

I really get addicted to these point-and-click indie games where there are different outcomes. They are always story-rich with great soundtracks, graphics, and it’s easy to get all the achievements. It’s just one of those things where gameplay in a video game goes to the backseat and the story takes the wheel.

Of course, there are different choices to make in this game, some of them have a big impact, and some don’t on what happens later on. Like at the very beginning when Misfortune trips and accidentally breaks the vase, she can either choose to fix it or leave it. That had some effect towards the end of the game. Then if you choose to take the colouring book with you, you can spend some time working on it later.

The game has a dark twist to it with some adult themes present like the time Misfortune finds the old lady hamster’s purse and finds a bag inside full of what she believes to be mints when in reality, they were actually drugs. When she takes some, she passes out and dreams, so yeah those were sedatives.

Then there were times where she would swear and the narrator would remind her to watch her language, but the biggest things I saw that made the story darker than I thought was everywhere Misfortune went, people were wearing strange masks with different facial expressions, there were crows everywhere and other strange creatures. Not to mention more and more posters of missing children were popping up as the adventure continued.

My favourite part of the game was when Misfortune goes to the Phantasmagoria fair, from there you have to choose which ride to go on since you only have one ticket, and then there are some minigames to win prizes.

Misfortune continued to pursue Benjamin every time she saw him, he would always run away. The narrator would continue to warn her to stay away, and I thought it was just because he hates foxes, but Benjamin is sent from another world to protect children from a monster, but he cannot interact with them. Nevertheless, Misfortune continues to go after him, ignoring the narrator’s warnings.

I think those hay dolls Misfortune finds helped assemble the puzzle pieces of Benjamin’s true role before you read his diary (should you choose to), it all started to come together after Misfortune got on the boat and had to escape the monster once again to continue following Benjamin.

So we have Morgo, our monster and he is the one behind the abductions of the other children, his “game” with Misfortune was to lure her into a trap basically. I eventually found a file in the game describing what Benjamin’s role was and how Morgo picks his targets. The final encounter where Misfortune hides from him once she realizes he’s not the narrator she can hear, but the monster she’s afraid of, is intense.

It’s quite impressive how even though his true form is revealed, Morgo still maintains his calm narrative voice the whole time. I was expecting it to change!

So how did Misfortune die? When was she run over by a car? I always thought it was when she crossed the road at the beginning and I was just playing as her ghost the whole time, hence why everyone else appeared as either ghosts or with masks on, like an alternate reality. It’s like she comes to terms with this at the end and goes to the afterlife? Pretty abrupt if you ask me, but if you use glitter on all the right spots, you can give the eternal happiness to her mother.

Though the ending did leave me with lots of unanswered question, the game itself was dark and charming game with great graphics and music. Misfortune is a delightful protagonist to journey with, even if that journey was a short one.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

👽Emily