Pilgrims (2019)
Amanita Design had been teasing its next full-scale adventure game, Creaks, for quite some time. While waiting for that, the studio surprised everyone with a smaller release, Pilgrims, in October 2019. As a long-time Amanita fan, I was genuinely pleased, especially since their previous release, Chuchel, had not really amused me. Pilgrims is a point-and-click adventure built around a card-game-inspired concept. It is illustrated and animated in a traditional style, yet with modern, high production values. Questionable and even slightly disturbing ideas become funny here, because they are presented in such a charming and innocent way.
Amanita’s games have a certain lightness that has matured over the years and gradually won over a wider audience. In Pilgrims, this takes the form of carefree playfulness, simple yet clever tasks, and smooth, clear usability. Combined with excellent visuals and music that confidently go against the grain, the result can easily become an unexpected hit.
At the beginning of the game, a wandering vagrant sets out to repay a card-game debt with a pot of boiled potatoes. This leads to an ever-growing chain of tasks and requests, friendships, and morally questionable deeds. In addition to the vagrant, playable characters include a devil, a begging old woman, and a highwayman. I laughed out loud while getting characters outrageously drunk, drugging a priest with an opium concoction, and mixing people’s heads with fly agaric. That alone says quite a lot about the spirit of the game, though certainly not everything.
The game includes a full set of achievements that cannot all be unlocked in a single playthrough. Personally, I initially struggled to imagine that there could be more than one solution to many tasks, so the achievements encourage thinking well outside the box. In practice, the story branches along side paths in a choose-your-own-adventure fashion, while the main narrative spine remains the same. My first playthrough lasted just over an hour.
I am not entirely sure in what sense the characters themselves are pilgrims. Everyone simply seems to pursue their own goals, self-fulfilment, assigned duties, or just the version of life they consider happy.
Jakub Dvorský’s artwork and Floex’s music have always worked for me, and they do so once again here. The card-dragging mechanic is a neat idea and should translate well across different platforms. For this sympathetic and sweetly inappropriate little game, I give 70 points out of 100.
Availability
Pilgrims is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and iOS. At least for now, there are no Android or console versions.