EDIT:

The Pedestrian discussion is now open. Feel free to share your thoughts and post open spoilers!

Prior message:

Welcome to the second Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club selection thread. Our second game is The Pedestrian! The target completion date is January 31, 2022.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after January 31, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is The Pedestrian?

It is a 2D puzzle platformer set on a series of street signs placed within a 3D world.

How long is The Pedestrian?

How long to beat lists it at 4 hours long.

Dammit, I felt confident it was going to be Lodoss War so I already got a jump on it. Damn you people!

This post was previously off-topic but I'm editing it to focus on The Pedestrian.

I wrote a whole blog about this game and I'm looking forward to seeing other people's thoughts on it. I liked the game as a whole but I thought that it got a bit repetitious in places and I also wished the end segment had been a bit more developed and drawn out because it really ties a lot of what the game does together in an interesting way. Those are kind of conflicting thoughts but I think they make more sense once you've played it.

I think that the graphical style of the game is very slick and well done and not like other games so that's a big plus. I also think the puzzles are 'clean' for lack of a better word and pretty fair in what they're asking you to think through and accomplish. It's a well made thing.

All that being said it didn't grab me and maybe that was due to the lack of a character or maybe it felt a bit sterile? I'm not sure. I liked it, as I said, but it didn't really pull me in. Looking forward to hearing what others have to say about it.

@bigsocrates: Oh I'm sure it's fine, I was just mostly glancing over at how many people had mentioned it, and had wanted to play it myself, so I assumed it would win out. I think Pedestrian was my #2 anyway, so no biggie!

Although after a bit into Lodoss I definitely have some...thoughts. But that is for another time that I am sure will come.

I'll just copy, paste, and then delete my comment.

Finished the first level (Warehouse). Liking how slowly they been implementing new things, espcially the last 2 puzzles leaves a lot of opportunities to open up. Going in, I had N+ in my head, and once I saw the door connecting piece of the puzzle, I immediately started thinking about Gorogoa again haha

I played about 15 minutes a few weeks back and wasn’t immediately digging it but I could play this while watching TV or listening to a podcast. I’ll be curious if it grows on me.

I completed the first level and had a pretty resounding "meh" feeling. At only 4 hours I'll probably still complete it, but early on it gave me very "oh it's another puzzle platformer, great" vibes. It's certainly well made though, and not unpleasant to play...just hasn't really grabbed me yet.

Why do I keep thinking of Baba is You while playing The Pedestrian?

I played this last year, Steam tells me I spent 4.4 hours in it. Some of the later puzzles are pretty interesting, while the game isn't super hard it does introduce new mechanics frequently enough to stay interesting. The visual design and animation are top notch. It's not a perfect game but I think it rises above the replacement-level puzzle platformer.

DNF, stopped after reaching the University level, I'm guessing from the progress bar that this is about a third of the way into the game.

The puzzle platforming is clever, but I completely lost interest in the game. It desperately needs something to break up the monotony of the puzzles like a narrative cutscene or an action sequence. You could say Gorogoa is similar but because it was so different I was motivated to keep playing while The Pedestrian feels like familiar ground wrapped in a nice presentation.

We can obviously talk about anything people want to talk about but I'd like to open up with a discussion of the last level, where you complete your offbrand game boy and suddenly find yourself able to navigate the 3D world. For those who didn't finish, the game kind of opens up and lets you take your little guy off the signs and on to the Game Boy to walk around. You then put him back into signs to solve some puzzles to advance, but the real trippy part is at the end where you get to a puzzle on the rooftops where there's a blueprint that's a 2D representation of the 3D area you're in. There you have to coordinate between the 2D and 3D areas to advance, for example picking up an object in the 3D world and repositioning it so that it is in a different place in the 2D world and you can use it. Or drawing connections between puzzle pieces in the 2D world which creates bridges between the rooftops in the 3D world.

I think it's a really interesting idea and it was bold not to tell the player what to do but let her figure it out herself, but it's just the one puzzle and then it's over. You then go into your room where you put in a computer disc and then get transported to a canoe on a lake and it's over.

I really wish that the "twist" had come sooner and iterated more on the 2D/3D interaction, which was much more original than the rest of the game. It felt like there was too much kind of bland puzzle platformer leading up to a very short novel area and then it was over.

I liked the game overall and it had a nice clean look and some pretty good, if straightforward, puzzles, but it feels like it ended just when it got really interesting.

I'll save the rest of my thoughts for after other people have added their perspective.

@bigsocrates: I was going to write something much longer than this, but you’ve already encapsulated my feelings on it. The game feels, for lack of a better word, thin. Sure the backgrounds being fully rendered (or at least the appearance of fully rendered from the limited vantage points) pays off in the final two areas, but it’s really just the one puzzle and that’s it. Perhaps it’s being spoiled for choice nowadays on outside-the-box puzzle games, but this one didn’t stand out from the crowd nearly as much as I thought it would when I saw its trailer.

All that being said, I enjoyed my time with it. There were no puzzles that really threw me a loop unless I’d been playing too late at night, so it was pretty relaxing. It’s a perfectly cromulent way to spend 4 hours and a solid 3-star game.

Posted this in the wrong thread, so I've reposted here and deleted the other comment:

I did not finish this game and I actually dropped off very quickly. For whatever reason, it just wasn't speaking to me and I found it unbearably boring.

- I don't hate the underlying concept. I definitely prefer it to Gorogoa in that Pedestrian actually has a consistent and clear set of rules (for the most part) to go along with the puzzles.

- I think the visual style is interesting, but ultimately wasn't changing enough to keep me engaged. Maybe that changes later in the game. It ended up feeling more like a gimmick that a central part of the gameplay.

- Some of the visual style I found very unclear. For example, in the first puzzle where you needed to use the power plugs, I spend a long time thinking the folded up power cord was a spring I needed to use to jump. Nothing about the way it was designed read "power plug" to me. It also took me a while to realize that you couldn't go back to rooms you'd already been to without resetting the puzzle, since the game never explained or called out the dashed line that would appear by the door or ladder you used.

- I think this game would work much better on PC than console. It suffers from the Gorogoa problem in that moving the cursor is just too slow. Even with the speed turned all the way up, I found it tedious to move the signs around. This is particularly a problem given how picky the game can be about placing and connecting the pieces. I thought it was really obnoxious how specific it could be about how close or far apart the signs could be. I kept hitting points in the puzzles where I either realized I had the wrong solution or I couldn't make the connections I wanted with the pieces where I had them because they were too close or too far away from each other. This generally necessitated moving several pieces around to get where I wanted, which takes freaking forever with the cursor, particularly with the game's "move this piece closer - but not that close!" shenanigans. I think this wouldn't be as big a deal with a mouse, but on console it's a big part of why I noped out on the game as soon as I did.

- If you are a dev and reading this, I implore you - stop putting low-grade vaguely jazzy music in your games! If it sounds like something you would hear playing in the background at Panera, it isn't good and you should use something else.

@bigsocrates The ending sounds interesting! I fell off this hard after completing the "school" level, as I was doing one level a day. At some point, was just tired of the puzzle mechanic of having to slide around these panels, and realized the best parts of this game were the one-dimensional platformer intermissions as you transit from one level to another.

Ahhh, I was bedridden (not covid, think it was either stomach flu or flood poisoning) over the weekend and didn't get to finish. I think I am getting close to the end. I suspended it when you get to the rooftop at night and music changes up. Was skimming and it seems like the ending is cool so might try to finish it up today as I am feeling slightly better and it isn't an intense game to play. I liked some of what it was doing but with these puzzle games I get easily frustrated and sometimes look up the solutions, which I had to do 2-3 times to progress so far.

@allthedinos: I'm pretty much in agreement with you except that I gave the game 3.5 stars out of 5. I don't think we need to fight about that .5 stars though. I think it's a fine game but what frustrated me was that it showed real promise at the end and then just kind of stopped. It was like it was all prologue and no substance. I didn't dislike the 2D puzzle platformer part and it did some neat stuff with environmental interaction with the circuits and stuff, and I enjoyed the graphical style, but the biggest issue is that we've all played dozens of puzzle platformers at this point. I think for $20 this would be a disappointment but for just the cost of the time it took to play (plus subscription fee of course) it's a decent time.

@therealturk: Sorry you didn't have a good time with this game. I understand your points and they all make sense. I didn't hate the music as much as you did, though. I thought it was pleasant. As I said in my earlier post they do something with the 2D/3D divide later in the game. There are both some very simple interactions early on (where you might complete a circuit in the 'real world' on a sign) and then a fully 3D portion later in the game, but I definitely agree they could have done much more with it.

@hhap: The panel sliding stuff could be a bit finnicky as @therealturk said. I think that the game definitely suffers from failing to iterate much on its ideas from area to area. It adds a few minor wrinkles but it's pretty samey from beginning up until the ending area. That serves to make the end twist hit even harder, but can make the meat of the game a bit boring.

@heelbill: You should definitely finish the last area. It's cool. I hope I didn't spoil too much for you. I tried my best to make it clear that spoilers were open. Whoops.

No, I didn't get it really spoiled and just made it to the "twist" part. I like that they are paying off the 3D environment backgrounds but I really need an invert option. I normally play FPS games on PC with m/kb and what first person stuff I play on consoles is inverted. I decided to play this on xbox since it presented as a 2D game, and it is a little wonky moving around, especially after being sick over the weekend, lol. I saw some complaints on Steamcommunity about adding inverted mouselook for the PC version from over a year ago, so kinda disappointed the dev didn't give the option. I guess it would have spoiled it to have it from the get go, but maybe just a prompt for the option to switch when the gameplay twist starts would have been nice.

Darn, now I have some FOMO for not finishing the game and seeing the twist. I'm going to reinstall the game just to check it out, I think I'm about 2 hrs from completion anyway.

@therealturk To be fair, you can change the cursor speed in the settings menu while in Gorogoa there was no such setting.

I did not finish it. It was fine, I guess. I got to just after the University section and was not compelled to play any more. I'm just going to do it, since no one else has: the game felt like just another puzzle game. Rather...pedestrian *cough*

So... I actually reinstalled the game and finished it after reading the spoilers in the last chapter.

The last chapter is really clever. Having to jump between 2D and 3D puzzles was a real "Now you are thinking with Portals" moment. It's a beautiful climax that is perfect in length and would have been ruined if there were more puzzles like that.

I still think the lack of any narrative breaks between puzzles really hurts the game's pacing. There's a walking simulator moment at the end and from what I gathered it's about a computer programmer who is so immersed in designing a game that they are living in it. The story beats just come too late for me to really be invested.

Also curious if there is any difference from picking the Man or Woman character in the beginning? I picked the Woman and noticed a few moments where there were inaccessible doors or switches meant to activate another area.

I actually covered this for Deep Listens and I'm glad to see more people playing it! The Pedestrian definitely sold me on its gimmick early on, but the more game-y the puzzles got, the less the physicality of the premise stuck. The early platforming through cityscapes with signs as your mode of movement were great, but the more fiddly bits they added the more it became just another puzzle platformer. The ending of the game definitely stretched the premise as far as it could go, and for that I applaud it even though I didn't necessarily enjoy it.

Those smooth camera moves between locations are real relax-trigger for me.

The game didn't start super strongly i must say, but with new mechanics introduced, i got a little bit more interested over time.

I just finished The Pedestrian a couple minutes ago. Missed the deadline, but not by much.

I really enjoyed this game. Not going to lie, solving all the puzzles on my own felt pretty good. Couple times I was ready to give up, but I eventually got through all of them and I’m not a huge puzzle game person.

That last section on the rooftop was simple but clever given what came before it. Not quite sure why I sailed away in a boat at the end, but maybe I’ll find Vinny’s diamond pickaxe while I’m sailing the open seas.

Looking forward to the next game. Starting to get a little bit of puzzle game burnout after these last two.

I just finished this and really enjoyed it. At times I felt like it was adding too may mechanics too quickly, but I never had to look up any solution (*), so I just needed to take a breather and take it in.

(*) actually, I couldn't figure out the very final puzzle. Obviously it's easy to unlock the door, but somehow it didn't occur to me to look away from the puzzle and check if doing so would unlock something in the 3D world >_< That's the only thing I looked up.

100%, that ending was perfect. I would play a sequel which was entirely made up of puzzles which jump between 2D and 3D like this -- but I'm glad it was just this one puzzle area at the end of _this_ game.