Pilgrims

Pilgrims is a short, handcrafted adventure game from Amanita Design, the Prague studio responsible for Machinarium and the Samorost series. It sits in that rare category of games that feel genuinely handmade, like someone painted each scene on a small piece of wood and handed it to you personally. You roam a loose, fairy-tale landscape, picking up companions, and the core loop is simple: collect cards representing items and characters, then play them against situations to see what happens. That sounds thin, and on paper it is. In practice it becomes a low-pressure puzzle box that rewards curiosity over logic. The design philosophy here is generosity. Almost nothing is locked behind a single correct answer. Got a bottle of wine? You could share it with the grumpy toll-keeper, bribe the bear, or drink it yourself for a useless but charming animation. Each companion brings their own card, their own personality, and their own subplot that resolves in a handful of screens. None of it overstays its welcome. The whole game runs somewhere between two and four hours on a first playthrough, depending on how much you poke at the margins, and that runtime is close to perfect for what it is. Amanita clearly knew when to stop, which is rarer than it should be. The art is the obvious headline. Painted, warm, slightly medieval-folk in its palette, with that signature Amanita quality where backgrounds feel like they contain small secrets you missed. The animations are hand-drawn and expressive in that exaggerated silent-film way the studio has always favoured. Sound design follows suit: a folk-inflected score that sits quietly underneath the action without demanding attention, and almost no dialogue, just grunts, laughs, and sighs that somehow carry full emotional weight. If you have ever described a game as cosy without feeling embarrassed about it, Pilgrims earns that word honestly. Where it falls short is depth. The card system never becomes complex enough to feel like a real puzzle game, and if you are someone who needs mechanical friction to stay engaged, this will feel more like an interactive picture book than a game. Replayability is technically present, since the team counts alternate solution combinations, but finding variant outcomes on a second run feels more like checking boxes than genuine discovery. The Metacritic score sitting in the high-70s reflects this split accurately: it is a lovely thing that some people will not consider a full game. That is a fair objection. It is also the wrong way to look at it. For players who appreciate intentional smallness, who remember Samorost 3 with genuine fondness, or who simply want something that does not ask much and gives back warmth and craft in return, Pilgrims is close to exactly what it promises. It is the kind of release you finish in an evening, feel briefly sad that it is over, and then quietly recommend to a friend who has been too stressed to play anything lately.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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