A quick puzzle platformer with a really interesting premise. Your goal is to use the signs in the environment and order them in a way to allow your "pedestrian" to make it to the door. The game finds many ways to make the gameplay loop and progressively more difficult. I personally struggle with late game puzzle games where in the latter parts I'll be racking my brain for the answer and needing to take breaks. The penultimate level was a doozy that had you exploring the entire level and undergoing an arduous puzzle in order to open the door you needed to. It felt great when everything clicks as puzzle games strives to do. I feel the game is a fun ride and concept but not really something I'd play again past the initial try, but if you want a cool little puzzle game its worth a play.

What a great little puzzle game! You're a stickman solving platformer puzzles to get from one puzzle to the next all for some mysterious purpose.

It's a straight forward game with almost no side puzzles or secrets or multiple endings.

The ending is a bit of a trip and an extremely clever idea, but it does leave a ton of open questions, none of which are answered. That's probably where it lost points for me, the ending sets up something amazing but then just sort of...ends. I wish there was more meat there at the end of the game.

Still, what a cute, wonderful game! 4/5

A pretty simple puzzle game with cute ideas and style.

There is not much to say about this game. It's a simple puzzle game but also a 2d platformer most of the time. You play as a cute little stick person. Push boxes, use keys, take specific items to their given place, etc. The gimmick is that you have control of the order you through the rooms. Let me explain more.

Your stick person is exploring puzzles on flat surfaces in the real world. For example, street signs, graph paper, walls of buildings, etc. Solving puzzles causes thing in the real world to change. Sometimes you can move some of the peaces in the real worls in order to solve your current puzzle.

The only time the game gets really challenging is the last puzzle. The only time I needed to look up the answer. It get really hard to know exactly what you are changing and how to piece it all together. The reason is because the area is too big and it's tedious to go back and forth. By that point I wanted the game to end as well. With enough trial an error you can do it, it will just take time. The end was cute and worth it.

I got all the trophies easily. It's a fun game to play once. But it doesn't leave a last impression.

Enjoyment - 6/10
Difficulty - 2/10

The Pedestrian is a short puzzle game with a great realised concept. The game leaves you far too soon.
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All puzzle games exist in the shadow of giants. Games like Portal, the Witness and Myst tower in the memories of gamers. These are experiences that subverted expectations of what a puzzle game could be, what it should be. Portal showed us that a game could deliver an engaging narrative whilst pushing a unique mechanic to its very limits. Myst proved that puzzle games could be pretty and compelling as well as teeth grindingly difficult. And the Witness proved that gamers will pay for any old shit if it's pretentious enough.

So oftentimes, a new puzzle game will try to ape one of these giants. Portal has perhaps the highest number of imitators, with QUBE, Quantum Conunudrum, Turing Test and more, and Myst has had its fair share of successors too. But the Pedestrian has its sights on the Witness, but not just to blandly imitate, rather, it intends to evolve the concept. How can you better blend the 2D and 3D than Jonathan Blow did? Seemingly, the Pedestrian comes to the conclusion it's better not to.

Almost all of the gameplay takes place in the second dimension: a fairly rudimentary puzzle platformer that takes place on street signs, blueprints and all sorts of other flat planes that you would expect to see a stick figure on. The 3D rendering is reduced to background work, enhancing the sense of a journey being undertaken by the player character as you travel from a factory through sewers and backalleys to eventually neon lit rooftops. It's quite pretty and while it doesn't add much to the gameplay, I find it hard to argue its pressence isn't an immense benefit to the game.

Now if you've played a few puzzle games before, you can probably guess the twist already. Why design and create all these 3D assets just to have them serve as digital wallpaper? The twist is so obvious and almost inevitable that I think I'd respect the Pedestrian more if it hadn't gone for it. Rather than be happy with its position as an exceptionally pretty and well crafted evolution of a flash game, instead it reaches for the lofty pedestal of the Witness. In its final moments it delivers its thesis, a proof of concept that goes nowhere and is so poorly explained that it kills all momentum. As well as breaking its own gameplay loop, the final puzzle suddenly crowbars in a trite, wordless narrative that hadn't even been slightly hinted at before then and completely undermines the rest of the game. It's like if the final boss of Dark Souls had been a DDR level and tells you that it's all been a dream.

This is to be expected though. Aspiring to be like the Witness is a fool's errand. I maintain to this day that the Witness is a meta-narrative, about the desire to see hidden meanings in that which is intentionally hollow, about a player's need for something so hard to have "meant something", and how easy it is to fool people with insincere, faux-emotional imagery. Trying to be the Witness is like trying to do an impression of an impressionist, it ultimately takes away more than it could ever have added.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh and what is, at the end of the day, a mostly cute and fun little puzzle game. I think I'm disappointed that the Pedestrian wasn't brave enough to stand by what it is. That it could have delivered a little wordless narrative about a stick figure on a journey and been happy with that narrative, but instead reaches for loftier heights at the cost of its own achievements. It's still worth playing if you love puzzle games, it's not the most inventive or challenging game, but it's generally quite cute and well paced. The Pedestrian could have been more if it had been brave enough to just be less.

It was good. Solid. Decent. I don't know! It was tedious. The puzzles were mostly convoluted "What order do you do this in?" type puzzles with occasional "Aha!" moments sprinkled in.

I guess it was a cool art style and some good mechanics but puzzle design was pretty mixed.

The ending I had some issues with the controls that dampened my opinions a bit, but it was still undeniably a cool ending.

Muita gente não conhece esse jogo, ele passou bem despercebido, mas é bem interessante.

É um jogo de puzzle simples, mas os cenários do game são muito bem pensados. Inclusive alguns puzzles não são muito fáceis não!

Em geral é um jogo divertido e curtinho, vale a pena.

Koncept prvotřídní. Skloubit 2D skákačku s logickou hrou a propojit to vzájemně 3D nadstavbou při přechodu mezi jednotlivými levely je nosný nápad. Jenže u konceptu pohříchu zůstalo. A tak to není ani pořádná skákačka, ani pořádná logická hříčka a celá 3D nadstavba je vyloženě do počtu a růžky vystrčí pouze ve finálním levelu. Skákání je bez výzvy a logické pasáže navzdory mnoha velmi dobrým nápadům nevyžadují zapnutí mozku.

Navíc ty dva herní prvky nejdou ruku v ruce, ale vždy je na řadě ten a pak onen. Ostatně právě pro stále nové nápady se nedostává prostoru přetavit již představené ve skutečné prvky. Něco se představí, řeknete si "jo, to je dobré", ale po představení honem honem na další prvek místo vytěžení skrze skutečné mozkolamy toho stávajícího.

Celé se to dá projít na první dobrou za dobu delšího celovečeráku. Jediný zásek je až finální level. A není dán obtížností jako spíše přes koleno lámaným level designem jdoucím proti všemu předchozímu.

Sights & Sounds
- Graphically, it looks outstanding for an indie. The city in which the game takes place is a visual feast from the dank sewers to the scenic college campus
- I loved the variation in the signboard person motif. Your little man or woman will change appearance depending on the sign you're standing on, so the visuals stay fresh despite the simplistic design choice
- The music stays thematically appropriate but tends lighthearted throughout

Story & Vibes
- It's pretty much a straight up puzzle game. If there's a story, it flew well below my radar
- The vibes more or less follow the visuals and music. When you're moving along the streets, the music is cheery to match the sunny visuals. When you're traversing the subways, the lighting and soundtrack take on a more serious, gritty tone
- I did not expect the "twist" at the end of the game. I won't spoil it here, but it's a pretty cool surprise that comes out of nowhere

Playability & Replayability
- As far as puzzle platformers go, this one leans far more heavily into the puzzles than the platforming. Contrary to the deviousness of some of the puzzle design, you're not going to have to dodge too many obstacles or make difficult jumps very often
- Although the puzzles begin easy and become pretty tricky by the end of the game, what lies between is a little uneven in its difficulty. Some of the puzzles preceding the penultimate chapter are surprisingly simple
- Although it'll probably be a while, I wouldn't mind playing this one again. Sure, you'll almost certainly get all your achievements on the first playthrough, but the game is interesting enough visually and mechanically to warrant a second look down the road

Overall Impressions & Performance
- All in all, this game was a pleasant surprise. The trailer and reviews definitely made me optimistic, but my expectations were still exceeded
- In spite of the good times, it's a little on the pricey side for a game you can 100% in 4-6 hours
- The game won't tax your system too badly and ran very well

Final Verdict
- 8.5/10. The price is a touch steep and would benefit from a more natural progression in difficulty, but there's enough fresh ideas here to make it stand out in a crowded genre. Definitely worth picking up for the right price