This is Misfortune. She is a wonderful child from a not so wonderful family. The sad part is, today is the day she will die.
-- Mr. Voice, our Narrator
Released in September of 2019 and developed by Killmonday, Little Misfortune is a 4th wall-breaking Point and Click adventure game/interactive story wherein you control a small girl named Misfortune as she follows the direction of the game's narrator, whom she calls Mr. Voice.
The game begins with a cutscene of a mysterious fox listening to headphones and pulling along a wooden wagon in a dark and mysterious wood. Around him are strange creatures that some people might recognize from the developer's other game, Fran Bow. Then, the fox opens a portal into another universe and is gone, and we begin our game proper.
Little Misfortune is a sweet little girl from an absolutely horrifying family. Her mother spends her time drinking "juice" and smoking, her father hits her mother when he's not absent from their lives, and the only way Misfortune can deal with it all is by throwing glitter around to make the world a nicer place, which she interprets as cutesy childish drawings that cover up the bad things, and to also reminisce about a mysterious fox she has named Benjamin whom she saw wandering around outside.
One day, she hears a narrator speaking about her, telling us, the player, how she is destined to die that day. Misfortune tells the narrator that she can hear everything he's saying. The narrator tells her that they are going to play a game, and that if she makes it to the end of the game, he'll give her Eternal Happiness, which she intends to give to her mother. The narrator, who hates foxes, by the way, directs her to go outside and cross the street, leaving behind her family and home, and that's when you begin to realize why her name is Misfortune. Regardless of the choices you and Misfortune make, the results are almost always unanimously bad, for her and for the people around her-- to horrifying and comedic effect. The narrator insists that there are no right or wrong choices, only actions and consequences, but it becomes clear as the game progresses that his motives are less than pure, and he seems to be intentionally goading Misfortune to go into increasingly dangerous situations.
A lot of the horror of the game is juxtaposed not only with the cutesy art style, but Misfortune herself who has an odd kind of naivety about everything that happens. It's usually played for laughs during the actual game, though it can be legitimately horrifying at points (such as when Misfortune proudly shows off her hiding place for when her Mom and Dad fight with each other). At one point in the beginning, you can choose to inform a man that his dog was crushed by a tree branch, only to find that he's hung himself before you arrived. Misfortune at first doesn't realize he's dead, Mr. Voice has to tell her, but then after she calls him Mr. Piñata man and throws glitter on him to give him "sweet boots".
Also, there's a part where she stops by an underground X-rated hamster club, takes some special "mints" and trips balls.
It's that kind of game.
If a little girl dropping acid in hamster clubs while an omniscient narrator tries to get her framed for hamster armed robbery before they both break into a hamster meth lab on their way to a terribad world where everyone wears masks and crows drop dead out of the sky isn't enough to convince you, here's a list of features from the official website:
FEATURES
– You may pet a doggy, a fishy, a wolfie, the Kraken, the kitty and the foxy.
– Visit a pet cemetery with a shovel.
– Now with real human voices: Hear Misfortune say some pretty cute things!
– Missing children.
– There’s a monster!
– Fall in love.
– Commit petty crimes.
– Original art by Natalia Martinsson.
– Original soundtrack by Isak Martinsson.