Girl, her brother and his lamp

Good day!
"Girl, her brother and his lamp" is a game made by Arlekin1980 using an engine we've already mentioned a lot of times, RPG Maker VX Ace. Anyway most of the times this engine was used for jrpg games, horror games, adventure games, exploration games and puzzles. Not in this case!

Released in 2015, "Girl, her brother and his lamp" can be described as a visual novel, or a sort of interactive adventure, the main aspect that will clearly attract new players as it attracted me is probably the beautiful visuals, after all this developer is the one that is/was working on "El sueno de la razon", that is a demo released around 2016 I'll probably check later.


This game has some really surreal imagery, and you've to see them in motion!

The game begins when two siblings found a lamp ta their aunt's home, and when they touch it... no, there is no genies that comes out (unluckily!), but instead they're transported away in another, alien dimension! Oh no! Now the two children have to find a way home from this surreal place because as someone once said "we're not in Kansas anymore"!!!

The game plays as a sort of "choose your own adventure" book, and in this sense it reminds to me of the old 1979 gamebook "The Cave of Time" by Edward Packard (that also wrote the 1985 sequel "Return to the Cave of Time"), in which a boy enters a cave that sends him to different places and times, so he keeps adventuring, and the reader has to make choices until he is able to let the protagonist come back home.
Well here it's the same situation (with a magic lamp replacing the magic cave): the two siblings will have a series of choices indicated just by some big yellow diagrams, and the player has to choose one of them, but exactly like in "The Cave of Time" some choices may lead to a bad ending, and it's often (in my opinion) unpredictable, part part of the fun is also watchind what happens even whan it's going to be a bad ending. To tell the truth there are some hints and clues about the correct choices to make but these are shown rapidly and can be missed (that's probably the reason why the game was listed as a puzzle game).


When a man with a lamp meets a man with a pistol, the man with a lamp will be a dead man!

The game as mentioned before, has extremely beautiful graphics, and in fact it's a visual novel with the emphasis on the visual part... there are no dialogues, no lines to read, texts or words, it's all immediate and very expressive. I'd call these scenes mini-movies since they're really well done and presents a good variety of styles and events.

"Girl, her brother and his lamp" is not a very long adventure and will take about 13-15 minutes at most, even if some mistakes are made along the way. But it's a work of art, all graphic assets are beautifully custom made for this game, all sounds are original, even the title screen is original. This is clearli a marvellous experience and adventure, still I find it difficult to define this a game, and for this reason it's probably not something for everyone. I also do not think there is any reason to replay the game once you've completed it, so the experience is beautiful but a bit limited. What else? Read the verdict!


Oh no.. tentacles! And this is not a an anime, so it will means just death. Well, that's not really reassuring but it's still something!

Final Verdict
What can I say? "Girl, her brother and his lamp" is impressive from a visual point of view, there are no errors, bugs or typos (well there are not even texts!), no problems or issues of any kind. This is an entertaining experience that really shows what can be accomplished with some effort and resources using RPG Maker VX Ace, this game somewhat reminds to me of the good old laserdisc games like Dragon's Lair or Space Ace, with all the beauty and limitations they had (they were more fun to watch than to play, because the gameplay is... how can I define it? Extremely simple? Bare bones?). For this reason I can recommend the game only to those who want to watch an interesting interactive and dreamlike short story, this is all good but if you are really looking for some engaging puzzle game, complex and intriguing story or addicting gameplay... well you've to look elsewhere!