The Pedestrian Review (marchi11)
"The Pedestrian" is a puzzle platformer that follows a stickman jumping from sign to sign inside a city made by gorgeous 3d graphics with tons of details and nice, atmospheric lighting/weather conditions. Puzzles are very creative and clever. They are evolving by constantly adding new interesting mechanics, while their pace and learning curve are great. Fantastic calm music and responsive controls complete a really pleasant experience. If only it had a small plot to follow and slightly bigger duration then it would be perfect.
Manometer: 8/10
The good
- Beautiful visuals. Nice, realistic graphics with various lighting and weather conditions and attention to detail even on small objects' design at extreme close ups. Although the 3d environments have actually nothing to do with the gameplay, they give it a strong atmosphere and a sense of exploration. Also, it's nice that the signs have a lot of different styles and colors, that alternate the aesthetics of each level.
- Fantastically designed, creative puzzles. Well balanced difficulty level. They're challenging, but not too hard. The game introduces constantly new mechanics or ideas and the puzzles are evolving so they never feel repetitive. Each time a new mechanic is added, it does a great job to help you learn it with easier levels that get more difficult gradually. Great pace.
- Good, responsive controls. Nice, smooth animations of the stickman.
- Fantastic, relaxing music to accompany you while solving puzzles.
- Great direction and cinematography. I didn't expect to say that for a puzzle platformer but the locations and the camera movement while moving from sign to sign are amazing.
- There are some points that connects awesomely the 3d world with the 2d signs with a little bit of interactivity between them.
- It has a few small levels that are almost pure platforming without puzzles. They're simplistic, but give you a nice break between the puzzles.
- That trick at the very end is so cool.
The bad
- There is no plot at all (not counting the very last part). With all this great work at the environments you could easily imagine a storyline evolving inside the 3d background. That would give you a purpose and a whole new meaning to your actions. Now you just solve puzzles casually and the concept of a stickman teleporting from sign to sign doesn't even make sense.
- Small duration. Each time that you have truly mastered a new mechanic, the puzzles' section ends. Maybe I just wanted more, but there is so much potential here. It feels like a lot more puzzles could have been added.