Pilgrims review :

Pilgrims is a short but very well made game that attempts to do something a bit new with the adventure game genre and pulls it off quite well.

Name: Pilgrims

Price :

£4.99 / $4.99 on Steam
£4.99 on GOG
Part of the Apple arcade subscription

$5 on Itch.IO 

Reviewed on:

Laptop 1

Review:

Pilgrims is the latest title by Amanita Design and while being vaguely in their normal genre of adventure games / point and click games it does do more to experiment with the formula than previous titles. Pilgrims innovation this time is to style the game and items you collect around playing cards. This has the big advantage over other point and click games of not requiring you to click on a specific pixel and clearly laying out your possible options in each case. Additionally Pilgrims has multiple solutions for a number of its puzzles meaning that you can often find a solution that makes logical sense to you. 

As is to be expected now Amanita Design's artwork is exceptional this time evoking a feeling of playing out a sort of puppet show series of what feel like almost folk tales. It's also worth noting that there's little to no actual text in the game with ideas and objectives being shown via pictures. 

Gameplay wise in most scenes you select a character to put in a scene (you can change them out too and this becomes a core part of some puzzles), you then select the item to use that you believe might lead to a possible solution and see the result of trying said item play out. Each character you get in what is essentially a party on the adventure has different things they're strong at, the outdoorsman / hobo is good at outdoor cooking and talking to people to negotiate for example while the bandit is often better for when a situation calls for violence. Selecting the right combination of character and items means the puzzles do have some level of complexity to them.

Story wise without spoiling too much each character has their own motivation in the adventure with the outdoorsman / hobo simply wanting to sail further down the river and the devil wanting to claim the soul of the priest, which the devil won after the priest bet it and lost in a poker game. The stories do often feel enjoyable and have overall the game has some nice touches of comedy to it.

Where I feel the game falters is that the game only took me 1 hour 13 minutes (73 minute) to beat first time without a guide and while it does offer replay ability in the form of collecting all the cards the game offers for finding the different solutions to all the puzzles I had 100% finished the game within 2 hours with the help of a guide to cross off a few solutions I missed. So it's a very short and sweet game.

Verdict:

Fairly Innovative with high quality art style and well thought out gameplay it's just a shame there's so little of it here that it makes it hard to recommend at its full asking price compared to some of its peers. While I'm reviewing the PC version I'd say those with Apple Arcade subscriptions will definitely find some joy here but on PC this is a game I'd say is one to pick up on sale and go in expecting about an hour or slightly over to beat it, which for some will be very fine.

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