The Pedestrian does a wonderful job at building on its premise as before long the bizarre and often ingenious ways the game makes use of the space both in and outside the confines of its signage panels become another joy to behold. But never does this demand for multi-tasking feel overwhelming or even irrelevant to what the game is trying to show. If it sounds like a lot to consider - especially in the span of one mere puzzle, for a lot of the scenarios - it usually is. All the while making sure that one doesn’t accidentally alter the route already put in place - resetting the puzzle as a result due to it becoming, technically, unfeasible. Introducing such things like switches, instant-kill traps and even a weird, subversive interpretation of Tetris-like arrangement with the way players frantically have to organize/reorganize panels so that routes, despite being able to criss-cross, remain linked relative to their positioning. But what starts off relatively simple early on fortunately cranks up its difficulty at a well-tuned pace throughout. Joining up doors of opposing sides (and only opposing sides) likewise with ladders that connect the bottom of one panel, with the top of another. The general idea behind most of the solutions lie in creating a network of routes between panels for your stick figure to make their way through. There’s novelty to the way The Pedestrian uses its literal world - this city of warehouses, sewers, train-lines, city streets and the sides of residential apartments alike - to base its puzzles, even if such glances are easily dispensed with.īut of course the mechanics of its puzzles - and the gameplay tools provided to the player - are where the real joys and eventual triumphs are housed most visibly.
Particularly with the way the”stages” (for lack of a better term) find a way to circle-back on themselves at points - easy as it is to spot previous puzzles off in the background or inside buildings alike. A feeling reminiscent of a game like Linelight - whose own implied 2D presentation made brilliant use of its very progression to offer such a shockingly unexpected weight of emotion in its latter parts. Granted, the inclusion is purely artistic and while it’s a shame that Skookum Arts don’t do much with this presentation to illicit some manner of narrative reveal (an explanation perhaps as to why this city is so eerily absent of its presumed populous, outside of passing vehicles on occasion), it’s a simple decision that gives one’s journey a quaint, fond touch of purpose. Even the way the options screen is viewed through a dramatic cut to one of the many, in-world CRT televisions dotted about. The way the camera slides, flies and weaves in-between foreground and background - select puzzles stretching so far as entire streets and warehouse spaces alike. Instead, Skookum Arts’ decision to transport a player’s attention in, out, up down and all around the expanse of the interconnected city environment only bolsters the level of charm this particular puzzle game carries through with immense success. In another scenario, it would’ve been likely that The Pedestrian‘s appeal - had it remained confined to that same 2.5D hopping from one puzzle to the next - would’ve been limited had the experience remained fixed to its gameplay. Conundrums that only grow more elaborate and more ingenious as you progress through what is a rather brief, but far from forgetful little title.
Marking itself down as yet another example of seemingly minimalist presentation, masking an otherwise tasking but wholly delightful series of tricks and temple-clamping conundrums. For something as sophisticated, as epiphany-creating, that the puzzle genre is, The Pedestrian quickly and successfully pin-points the kind of response it’s aiming to evoke.
But crucially, in a gameplay sense as well. Potential in both an artistic sense - the textural shift as panels interchange between metallic, paper and even electronic surfaces at points. For a game all about signage - on guiding your trustee stick-man (or stick-woman) from one enclosed surface to the next - Skookum Arts, in their debut effort no less, have managed to approach a topic as commonplace as signage, yet somehow find huge potential within. It’s amazing how even the most mundane of things can harbor such intrigue.