With graphics resembling an illustrated children’s book, Pilgrims brings its interactive story to life.
Pilgrims features the adventures of a hobo, a bandit, a granny, and the devil himself.
Players have several options for completing the “choose your own adventure” storylines within the game, and the game’s achievements hint at alternative choices players can choose in subsequent playthroughs.
There are no spoken or written words in Pilgrims. Instead, the story is conveyed entirely through pictures.
The game is fairly short. I collected all of the achievements after playing the game for just over four hours. I only had to look up how to collect one of the achievements.
The game costs $5 on steam, and I believe it's definitely worth the price.
The remainder of this review contains significant spoilers for the game. If you want to play Pilgrims before learning about its endings, you should play the game before reading onwards.
If you’re a parent who wants to know if you would be comfortable with your child playing the game, there are a few game elements I discuss later in this review you might want to consider.
The Priest and the Devil
Pilgrims begins with a cutscene where our main characters play a game of poker.
The hobo doesn’t have enough money to continue playing.
The bandit offers to let the hobo continue to play, but if the bandit wins the round, the hobo will owe him a bowl of cooked potatoes.
The bandit does, in fact, win the round.
Then the priest is out of money. The devil offers to let the priest continue to play, but if the devil wins the round, the priest will owe his immortal soul.
The devil wins the round, and the priest owes the devil his soul.
Right off the bat, the stark contract between owing someone a bowl of cooked potatoes and owing someone your soul is quite pronounced.
After the cut scene, the playable game begins, and the hobo must cook a bowl of potatoes for the bandit before he can move on to the rest of the map.
The player must resolve three separate storylines to complete the game.
In one of the storylines, the player must help the devil kidnap the priest and take him to hell to collect the priest’s soul.
While there are multiple ways this can be achieved, there is no way to complete this part of the game without helping the devil kidnap the priest.
For variety’s sake alone, it would have been nice to have an alternate route to complete that part of the story, perhaps by attacking the devil or by paying off the devil with money or the king’s diamond in exchange for the priest’s debt.
Mechanically, this could be achieved by allowing the player to recruit the priest to join their party if they visit him before visiting the devil.
While Pilgrims is just a game, and no one’s wellbeing is actually at stake, the game did prompt me to reflect on the morality of the situation.
Almost everyone would agree that someone shouldn’t be legally allowed to create a contract where they sell themselves into slavery. The stakes of the agreement are just too detrimental to one of the parties to be morally allowed under the law.
Likewise, someone shouldn’t be allowed to bet their soul in a game of poker, if the consequences of their loss would be eternal pain and suffering. Again, the stakes are too high for the agreement to be valid.
So, once again, I would appreciate an alternate path for the priest and devil storyline.
Granny and the Old Lady
In another storyline, the player must help granny get her house back.
Granny let another old woman borrow her broom. The old woman then hit granny with the broom, chased her with it, and took her house.
In this storyline, the player must get the broom from the old woman and give it to granny, who then hits the old woman and gets her house back.
This story also only has one possible ending, but it’s a good one.
I should also mention this game features a significant amount of drug use.
The player can give various characters alcohol, a sleeping potion made from poppy plants, or a psychedelic potion made with a magic mushroom.
The NPCs likely don’t know the contents of the potions before they drink them, which wouldn’t be remotely ethical in real life, but can be fun in a video game that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The King and the Chicken Dragon
The final storyline features the struggle between the king and a chicken dragon. I find this storyline to be the most interesting of the three.
The chicken dragon visited the king and demanded he surrender the queen.
The king enlists the help of the bandit to kill the dragon. The bandit agrees to kill the dragon if the king gives the bandit his kingdom and his queen if the bandit succeeds.
The player can complete the storyline in two different ways.
The bandit can kill the dragon, and the king bestows the bandit his kingdom and his wife.
Alternatively, the bandit can make a deal with the dragon, who offers the bandit a treasure chest in exchange for the queen.
The bandit can threaten the king and bring the queen to the dragon. The dragon completes his end of the bargain and provides the bandit with a treasure chest.
I find it amusing that there is no ending where the king keeps his queen.
It should be noted that the queen is perfectly happy with the chicken dragon. She is also happy with the bandit in the other ending.
The music in this game is very good. I particularly like the melody that plays after you visit the top fireplace on the map.
Captain Sauce made two Let’s Plays of Pilgrims, which I greatly enjoyed. His videos informed me of the game existence, which led me to purchase the game for myself.
Captain Sauce’s commentary and sense of humor lend themselves really well to this game.
His second video featured some of the other decisions available in the game.
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