Pilgrims

I’ve always kept my eye on Amanita Design, even though Machinarium is the only truly great thing they ever did. Pilgrims, on the other hand, is easily their worst major title. It’s a point-and-click adventure (as usual) with a card-based inventory and multiple playable characters, but the card aesthetic is just aesthetic, and the characters don’t have any consistent unique abilities that can interact. The real gimmick is that each puzzle has multiple solutions depending on the character and item used. Presumably the thought was that at least one solution to any given problem will avoid that infamous adventure game logic, and while that is the case some of the time, at others, every possible solution still manages to feel completely arbitrary. And four times the characters means four times the repetitive experimentation. Compared to the developer’s previous work, it’s most similar to Samorost, being a comically low-stakes story attempting to skate by mostly on charm. And while that’s certainly present, the uncharacteristically grounded setting and the characters’ endless gibberish eroded my enjoyment even before its hour-long lifespan was finished.