From the ever-excellent Czech indie team Amanita Design, here we have its 2019 mini-effort Pilgrims. It’s a short adventure game with quirky humour and some puzzles.
The studio is famous for avant-garde titles such as Samorost 3 (2016), but has issued more mainstream efforts along the lines of the super cute Chuchel (2018).
Pilgrims is somewhere in the middle. Available on mobile, PC, and Nintendo Switch it’s a cheap and cheerful experience and a great introduction to gaming (if you’re new to this sort of thing). Onward!
Roam the land in Pilgrims (for giggles and snorts with cohorts)
Right, the game begins with a card match during which the moustachioed protagonist loses and owes a local heavy drinker some boiled potatoes.
What plays out from there is a point-and-click adventure set across various set pieces, into which you have a selection of cards. You gather more cards, such as an acorn, and trade these with the various individuals you can visit on the map.
A story develops where you add more characters to your troop, including a human female OAP, the heavy drinker bloke, and what appears to be the devil.
You direct them across the map, gather items, solve whimsical (i.e. cryptic) puzzles, and watch the charming animations (replete with gibberish non-English ranting from the characters).
Yes, then, it’s standard point-and-click fare along the lines of Papetura (2021) and classics such as The Curse of Monkey Island (1997).
The difference here? Well, it’s accessible, cute, short, and sweet. It’s a game you can just watch in action (if you so please). Behold!
It’s a short game. We’ve seen some reviews from gamers on Steam complaining about that… but, we mean, what do they expect from a mobile game that costs £2? You’re not going to get Skyrim levels of playability here.
Instead you’ve got a cute, funny, and quirky little experience that we enjoyed a great deal. We savoured our time with Pilgrims, drawing out the experience for over an hour of gameplay.
Pilgrims won the CEEGA 2020: Best Mobile Game award.
We think that’s a reflection of its quality here. Amanita Design is an expert at these cute and quirky experiences and we encourage non-gamers in particular to give some of their games a go.
They’re very different from mainstream gaming. And Pilgrims, with its mobile-friendly setting and cheap price, is a great place to get started.
For long-term gamers, or anyone who loves the point-and-click genre, this is loveable aside that may offer a short playing time… but it makes up for it by being downright bodacious.
Floex’s Glorious Soundtrack to Pilgrims
Amanita Design has thoughtfully provided an animated, complete soundtrack to Pilgrims on its YouTube channel. If you’ve got a spare 21 minutes give that thing a listen—it’s fantabulous.
The music is by Czech indie game composer Floex (aka Tomáš Dvořák). He’s something of a cult legend at this point with the canon he’s building up.
For example, he’s also responsible for the fantastic music on point-and-click adventure Papetura (2021), amongst many others.
Our favourite from Pilgrims is Samsara (here it is in all its glory).
Dvořák wrote, produced, recorded, and mixed all the music.
Again, for us this just highlights the level of musical talent out there in the world. And indie games are providing an outlet for these composers to get their music heard worldwide.
That’s a great thing indeed! Floex is one of our favourites of the lot.
