Itmightjusthaveeasilybeenadapted
intoaPixarshort:givensentience
andagencyovertheotherobjects
within the signs it occupies, a stick
person breaks free from the confines
of their painted prison and hops from
sign to sign, from subway to street,
from mild peril to slightly more
pressing peril.
That might not
sound a deep enough
well of creativity to
birth an entire game,
but consider this:
firstly, the puzzles build
on each other in
complexity in
remarkably well-judged
increments and are interwoven
between non-taxing platforming
sequences. Secondly: it is quite short.
What’s most striking about The
Pedestrian isn’t the craftsmanship of
the puzzles themselves, but where
they exist within the game world.
You’re always looking at a 3D
environment, technically, but
focusing on 2D elements on a flat
surface – a whiteboard, a computer
screen, the odd blueprint, or most
often some abstraction of a public
safety or road sign.
Skookum’s clever about this
unique way of presenting its puzzles.
With your attention placed squarelyononeelement,hintsflutterawayon
post-itnoteselsewhereonscreenand
asthetasksathandgrowincreasingly
more involved, the intrepid stick
person – you can pick a male or
female avatar – affects not just the
arrangement of the signs, but the 3D
world surrounding them too.
The interweaving
quality between its 2D
planes and wider world
work is not just as a bit
of visual interest, and
I’m sure I wouldn’t
have enjoyed this
nearly as much if the
whole game existed as
aprocession of signs
along a featureless wall. The 3D
environments are markers of
progress – in a very real sense, it feels
like an adventure thanks to these
scenery changes.
Narrative’s certainly present, but
in the loosest sense possible. You
have to actively look for it, think
about every detail, notice the
phrasing of Steam achievements and
the copy on its store page. In other
words, Monkey Island it ain’t. The
absence of dialogue or, well, any
characters either, helps your brain to
zero in on the task at hand without
unnecessary expositional distractions,
so it’s a sensible design call. I did findmyselfcraving a bit more revelation,
though.It’sbecome a bit of a genre
staplenow,hasn’t it?TIMEOFTHE SIGNS
WhileThePedestrian’s wider world
givesasenseof forward momentum
andabitofmeaning to your actions,
thecomplexity of its mechanics
deepens over its runtime too, and the
visual language you need to
assimilate broadens. What begins as
walking through doorways and
climbing ladders to hop from sign to
sign quickly evolves into rearranging
several signs, connecting doorways
and ladders to reveal a critical path
through them all.
And just as that absorbs into your
grey matter, it shifts again. Dragging
boxes through the rat runs you’ve
constructed. Using switches and
levers to operate bounce pads,
pistons, elevators and switchable
platforms. Within an hour or so the
signs that once looked like cute Pixar
short material now resemble circuit
board diagrams of your nightmares.
This ascension through the ranks
of friendly to taxing obstacles is
handled with the pacing and and
intuition of a veteran studio. I am, in
all honesty, quite a stupid man. But I
never felt hopelessly stuck here, and
that says much more about
Skookum’s craft than my IQ.
Perhaps it’s unfair to chastise it for
not doing more. Perhaps we’ve just
been spoiled by the likes of Braid,
Inside et al whose reveals and
U-turns leave real impact. Spoiled or
not, I was left cold by the scarcity of
narrative or stylistic flourishes, but
fortunately the difficulty spike’s
gradient is so expertly judged and the
presentation so inherently endearing
that The Pedestrian can’t help but be
ajoyforitsbriefduration.NEEDTOKNOW
WHATISIT?
A2.5Dplatformpuzzler
setwithinsigns
EXPECTTOPAY
£15.50
DEVELOPER
Skookum Arts
PUBLISHER
Skookum Arts
REVIEWED ON
i7 9700K, RTX 2080 TI,
16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
skookum-arts.com75
Novel presentation and a
masterful complexity
curve, but The
Pedestrian’s very shy
about storytelling.VERDICTSkookum’s
clever about
this unique way
of presenting
its puzzlesI
n those moments when your mind drifts away from whatever
mundane reality you’ve put in front of it, do you ever imagine the
stickmen in road signs coming to life, and having adventures? No,
me either. But it’s to everyone’s benefit that somebody at Skookum
has, because it provides a fine foundation for the studio’s debut.WALK THIS WAY
Stick it to the man in public sign puzzler
THE PEDESTRIAN. By Phil Iwaniuk
GIVE ME A SIGN The stages of solving a puzzle in The Pedestrian
AIMLESS
REARRANGING
Maybe I’ll hit on the right
route by sheer chance?ACTUAL
PROGRESS
I still don’t know how, but
this works now.UNBEARABLE
SMUGNESS
I bet I did that in half the
time it’d take anyone else.INITIAL DISMAY
OK, this one’s definitely
harder than anything
before it. Bugger.The Pedestrian
REVIEW