Time to Finish: 4 hours

I picked up The Pedestrian from the Steam sale this year. It’s been sitting on my wishlist for a while and I had an itch to play a puzzle game. What caught my eye with The Pedestrian was that the puzzles appear to take place on street signs. As it turns out, it takes place over all sorts of signage: From Street signs to bathroom signs to blueprints.

Things I liked:

The Difficulty: I like puzzle games a lot but I don’t like when they get so hard I feel like I need a guide on another monitor just to play the game. The puzzles start out fairly easy and do get progressively more complex as they should. While I’d get stuck every now and then on a particularly challenging puzzle, I always felt there was enough information to figure it out. Whether that be something I overlooked or leveraging a mechanic in a particular way. I never felt stuck to the point of frustration.

The Mechanics: The Pedestrian is a 2d puzzle platformer. Each part of the puzzle takes place over multiple signs and you can connect the signs in various ways to get the stick figure out of the exit door and on to the new puzzle. You can move the signs around to make more connections between them. Some connections that don’t work at a particular angle will become available when the sign is moved. Breaking connections after you’ve started moving the stick figure will, in most cases, reset the puzzle. As the game progresses, a few more mechanics are added on. Some levels need you to connect the electricity between wires to open up new pieces of the puzzle. Some signs let you jump to another sign without a door. And some signs can be painted green so certain obstacles in the level aren’t reset when breaking a connection. I really enjoyed figuring out how the whole level fit together before I sent my stick figure out to the exit.

The Visuals: The mix between 2d puzzles on signs and complex 3d scenery in the background made this game feel very unique. The music mixed with the slightly cartoony backgrounds made me feel like I was playing a Pixar short.

Things That Could Have Been Better:

Then Music: This isn’t to say the music wasn’t good because that’s simply not the case. I wanted the music to play more frequently than it did. The pauses in between the music felt slightly too long and there wasn’t much background noise in between. It lead to a bit of awkward silence, especially if I was stuck on a particular puzzle for a while.

The Length: The Pedestrian is a short game and while it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome I wish it was a bit longer. Just when I was getting a handle on the more involved mechanics of the puzzles it ended. I will most likely replay it in the future!