The Pedestrian
Much more than middle of the road
Abstract puzzle-platformers often place you in totally unexpected situations – jumping through portals in the hopes of receiving cake, say. But while most indie examples usually force you to navigate through a dark and dingy setting, The Pedestrian adds some welcome lightness to the genre. Here how you act and think must effortlessly intertwine. The kicker this time around? No city road sign is safe.
What could have easily remained a cute gimmick is actually well implemented. You play as the pedestrian of the title, who in this instance is the stick figure you commonly see on safety signs littered around buildings. This 2.5D adventure sees you transfer and hop between signs (you’ll have passed through hundreds by the story’s end), with getting from point A to point B always requiring you to complete some wild feats of logic. Sometimes this involves completing puzzles within the signs themselves, but more often it requires you to rearrange and reconnect public signs in an appropriate order.
It’s precisely because of this two-layered approach to puzzles that The Pedestrian is no slouch when it comes to difficulty, especially as additional mechanics like connecting electrical circuits and bouncing platforms are gradually introduced as your skills and familiarity with the puzzling grow. Preventing you from pulling your hair out is the knowledge that there is always one definitive solution to each puzzle, and the connectable nodes between signs have a finite number of others they can link to. You can solve it.
ONE WAY SYSTEM
The Pedestrian would have been perfectly fine without the real-world framing device that sees your person travel from the subway to a university campus and beyond, but the camera swooping between signs and locations lends the game a nice cinematic quality. By the end of the journey, you may even find yourself caring deeply about the little safety-first figure at the centre of it all.
Though an extremely simple concept, The Pedestrian makes guiding a road-sign person from place to place thoughtful enough that it never grows tiresome – and far more than just a surface-level novelty. The adventure is short, yes, at just three or four hours, but the realistic city surroundings, beautiful accompanying music, and genuine challenge of later puzzles will make you want to Go rather than Stop.